The topic that I want to pursue is law and criminal justice through the lens of psychology. Last summer, I took a class at Johns Hopkins about psychological profiling. I was intrigued about learning why spree and serial killers do what they do. One of the reasons why I believe has to do with pathologies, how one’s life events lead to such incidents. I want to explore this more in-depth and think about:    

• How were the pathologies created?
• How do they differ between spree and serial killers?
• Which specific serial and spree killers were most align with the pathologies?
• How can the pathologies be used to prevent future incidents? 

I’m not quite sure if this is too narrow of a topic to follow but as I do more research and do some more thinking, I can always open the topic up. So far, some drafts of my essential question are:

• How can psychology be applied to law and criminal justice?
• How can psychology affect police investigations in serial and spree killings?
• How does previous knowledge of criminal behavior aid or hurt police investigations of arresting spree and serial killers?

I’m not quite sure about what this exactly looks like for a senior project but I can envision doing research, taking some online classes, watching documentaries, and reading novels. My plans for the moment are to contact my professor from the course at Johns Hopkins and discuss more about resources, topics, what this project could look like and etc.