7
Editorial
Notes
Welcome to the first issue of Volume 36 of the International Yearbook of the Faculty of Security
Studies, University of “Kliment Ohridski”, Bitola, Macedonia. This issue of Yearbook presents
another diverse collection of articles that have been presented at the conference of the Faculty,
“Criminalistic Education, Situation and Perspectives – 20 Years after Vodinelić” held on 24-25
October 2014. Following a successful refereeing by the Organizing Committee of the Conference,
the Editorial Board of the International Yearbook of the Faculty of Security Studies has agreed to
continue with the practice of publishingthe best articles presented at that conference. I am very
grateful to all those who contributed articles to this volume. We will continue to offer an academic
forum for experts from the region specializing in the field of security studies, including a wide
range of topics including: International relations; Police sciences, Security studies; Homeland and
International Security; Criminology; Criminal Law and Legal sciences, and Criminalistics. I hope
you will take advantage of the opportunity the Yearbook offers to publishyour latest research
efforts.
Sincerely,
Editor of the International Yearbook of the Faculty of Security Studies
Prof. Zhidas Daskalovski
8
Dear Readers,
In 2014 we marked the 20
th
anniversary of the death of the founder of the science of
criminalistics, professor Vladimir Vodinelić, PhD. On that occasion, at the initiative of and in
coordination with prof. Metodija Angeleski, PhD, from FON University, one of the successors of
professor Vodinelić, we submitted a proposal for organizing a conference for criminalists –
theoreticians and practitioners. The conference was entitled “Criminalistic Education, Situation and
Perspectives – 20 Years after Vodinelić”.
Vladimir Vodinelić, PhD, (1918-1994) was a professor at the Faculty of Security since its
establishment as the only higher education institution in former Socialist Federative Republic of
Yugoslavia. With his presence, as well as his educational and creative work, professor Vodinelić
contributed to the renown of the institution which admitted students from all republics and
provinces of former Yugoslavia. His entire work is of particular importance and inspiration to all of
us studying criminalistic theory and practice. With the presence of the distinguished professor, the
faculty profiled itself as one of the most competent institutions as far as education
of security forces
members is concerned. The graduates of the Faculty of Security enjoyed particular respect, with a
guaranteed status in the state security system. The faculty enjoyed and still enjoys authority and we
hope that it will continue its work in the future, keeping its central and respected position in our
country and the wider region as regards studying criminalistics, security, police, social, legal,
criminological sciences, as well as the areas of private security, thanks to a great number of
professors who invested themselves in building its future, including professor Vodinelić.
Through the organization of this event we shall commit ourselves to building the culture of
celebrating important events and persons as the basis for confirming the identity of the institution.
We expected attendance of a significant number of admirers of the life and work of prof. Vodinelić,
scientific workers, researchers and practitioners in the field of criminalistics and related scientific
disciplines. Eventually, a total of 58 papers by prominent authors were submitted to the conference.
The conference was held on 24-25 October 2014 at the Faculty of Security in Skopje.
The scientific conference was prepared and organized by the following teaching staff from
the Department
of Criminalistic Sciences, and prof. Metodija Angeleski, PhD:
-full professor Borče Murgoski, PhD
-associate professor Zlate Dimovski, PhD
-associate professor Marina Mališ Sazdovska, PhD
-associate
professor Marjan Nikolovski, PhD
-associate professor Svetlana Nikoloska, PhD
-assistant professor Dragana Batić, PhD
-assistant professor Ljupčo Todorovski, PhD
- assistant
professor Katerina Krstevska
- assistant professor Nikola Dujovski
-teaching assistant Ice Ilijevski, PhD.
9
Dragana Batic UDK:343.95:343.132
Faculty of Security Skopje
THE SCIENTIFIC CONTRIBUTION OF THE PSYCHOLOGY IN
DETECTING AND PREVENTING CRIME
Abstract
In the most jurisdictions in the resolution of crime, as well as in judgment, it is taken into account
psychological circumstance, embodied in the person of the offender as well as his/her mental state at the time
of execution of the act. With the principle of individualization of the crime, which takes into account the
person
undertaking, psychology enters in a big way into the modern criminal law.
The paper attempts to present the participation of psychological knowledge in all areas pertaining to the
personality of the offender and in the process of clarification of the truth, starting from the police
investigation through trial, ending with penalty treatment, the person being sentenced for his crime.
For this purpose, tasks of forensic psychology, psychology of testimony and penological psychology will be
briefly presented. It will also display criminalistic profiling that is increasingly being applied in order to
investigative authorities to provide specific information about the type of person that committed the act,
which forms a circle of potential suspects.
In all these processes (discovery, defining, prediction of future behavior and treatment) psychology as a
science gives its stamp and contributes to greater efficiency and enriching the science of criminalistics.
Keywords: psychology, criminalistics, criminal personality, individualization of the offense
1.
INTRODUCTION
When a criminal act is committed, the first question addressed to the regulatory authorities that the
society entitled as their protection against the crime is: “Who did it”? If we know that behind every criminal
act stands a certain person/persons, the question that is further asked is “what made him/them do it, how to
find them and bring them to the face of justice, and how, after they get convicted and serve time in prison,
not to repeat the crime/s”. In an attempt to respond these questions, the criminalistics and criminal science
make use of the psychological skills and put them in practice.
Why Psychology? The main reason probably lies in the fact that psychology as a science studies the
individual, evaluates the personality, and when it comes to an offender, by studying their personality it tries
to give answers to many questions such as: motive, character traits of the person that made them commit the
crime, their psychological state at the time the crime was committed, mental health, emotional maturity,
system of values and many more traits that lead the individual to criminal activities.
During the 30s of the past century the criminology and criminal take into consideration the concrete
man with his psychological and sociological characteristics, so that the sentence is determined depending on
the offender, his personality, his past, way of life and thinking and his characteristics. “New members of the
game are „extenuating circumstances‟ so that in the verdict enter not only „the circumstances‟ but something
very different as well. That different thing is his past and the act, and finally what can be expected of him in
the future”.
1
This approach in the contemporary criminal law opens an opportunity for a wide use of the
psychological knowledge. The psychologists were expected to give a psychological portrait of the offender
during the trial, as well as a proposition for exercising certain educational and preventive-therapeutic
measures that would help predict future behavior and prevent them from re-offending. In short, “the policy,
according to which in solving the criminal act and its verdict it has to be taken into consideration the
psychological circumstance, that is to say the defendant‟s personality and their mental state at the time the
crime was committed, it is widely accepted in the legal systems of many countries.”
2
Connected to this task, psychology, especially the psychology of the personality makes efforts to find
answers to why one person, in certain circumstances, acts in a certain way, and some other person in the
same or similar conditions acts in different way, that is to say, which psychological factors affect one person
1
Kostic, M.,
Forensic psychology, Institute for books
and educational resources, Belgrade, 2002
2
Same