Criminal Investigations of Sexual Offenses Techniques and Challenges

Nadine Deslauriers-Varin is an Associate Professor of criminology at the School of Social Work and Criminology at Université Laval, QC, Canada. She received her BSc and MSc in Criminology from the University of Montreal (Canada) and she completed her PhD at the School of Criminology at Simon Fraser University (Canada). She is an affiliated researcher of the International Center of Comparative Criminology (ICCC) - for which she also acts as the head of the ICCC – Université Laval division, a collaborator for the Canadian Society of Evidence-Based Policing (Can-SEBP), and a Regional Champion for the International Investigative Interviewing Research Group (iIIRG). She currently sits on the editorial board of the Journal for Police and Criminal Psychology. Nadine’s research has been funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Fonds de Recherche du Québec - Société et culture, the Ministry of Public Safety & Solicitor General through the British Columbia’s Crime Reduction Research Program, the International Center of Comparative Criminology, and Université Laval. Most of her research projects are carried out in collaboration with police forces and aim at developing better investigative practices (e.g., suspect identification and prioritization for sexual, violent and serial crimes, and police interrogation practices). Her work has been published in top tier peer-reviewed journals in her field and has been the subject of many scientific papers, book chapters,presentations, and special issues in scientific journals. To date, she trained close to 200 investigators about suspect interviewing best practices.

Craig Bennell is a Professor in the Department of Psychology at Carleton University, ON, Canada. He is also the Director of Carleton’s Police Research Lab. Craig received his B.Sc. in Psychology from the University of Alberta (Canada) and his MSc and PhD in Psychology from the University of Liverpool (UK), where he studied under thesupervision of Professor David Canter (the founder of Investigative Psychology). Craig is a previous President of the Society for Police and Criminal Psychology and a previous Editor of the Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology. He currently sits on the editorial board of numerous peer-reviewed journals, including Psychology, Crime, and Law, Legal and Criminological Psychology, and the Journal of Investigative Psychology and Offender Profiling. He is also a founding member of the Crime Linkage International Network based out of Birmingham, UK, and he is a collaborator for the Can-SEBP. Craig has published and presented widely on various topics related to the use of psychology in police investigations. He has also co-authored numerous books, including a recently edited volume entitled Crime Linkage Analysis: Theory, Research, and Practice (with Jessica Woodhams). Craig’s research has been funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Canadian Police Research Centre, Correctional Service Canada, Ontario’s Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services, and Carleton University.