FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

"A tour de force…. Wagenaar and Crombag display eloquence as writers, and their flair for narrative combined with faithfulness to science makes this book a remarkable work on psychology and law."
—Elizabeth Loftus, past president of the American Psychological Society and Distinguished Professor, University of California-Irvine

"Wagenaar and Crombag convincingly and engagingly demonstrate the practical and theoretical benefits of detailed psychological analyses of actual cases. A rewarding read for anyone interested in investigation and proof."
—Steven D. Penrod, Distinguished Professor of Psychology, John Jay College of Criminal Justice

THE POPULAR POLICEMAN
AND OTHER CASES
Psychological Perspectives on Legal Evidence

Willem Albert Wagenaar and Hans Crombag

Published by Amsterdam University Press
Distributed by the University of Chicago Press

Law and Order: Criminal Intent, Medium, Criminal Minds: Psychology plays an increasingly larger role in today's popular conceptions of police crime solving. But it's not just on television. The psyches of criminals, witnesses, and law enforcement officers are becoming an ever more important part of prosecuting and solving cases, and The Popular Policeman and Other Cases skillfully dissects this complex new dynamic operating in legal systems around the world.

From a wife-strangler's amnesia, to unreliable eyewitnesses to a cat murder, to coerced false confessions, distinguished scholars and court experts Willem Albert Wagenaar and Hans Crombag explore how psychology affects a wide variety of legal cases and issues. Their fascinating case studies touch upon every crisis and conflict in daily human life, such as pyramid schemes, domestic violence, gambling, and torrid love affairs. In each case study, drawn from court records throughout Europe, the authors explain the psychological issues at stake and analyze the cases using their psychological expertise and backgrounds in criminology.

An intriguing investigation into the nebulous workings of the human mind and the precision of law, The Popular Policeman and Other Cases untangles the web of law and human frailty, and reveals just how much the justice system depends on the inner workings of everyone involved.

Willem Albert Wagenaar is honorary professor of psychology at Utrecht University and professor of psychology at Leiden University, and he specializes in witness reliability. He was a court expert in the Jerusalem trial of John Demjanjuk. Hans Crombag is professor emeritus of psychology of law at the universities of Maastricht and Antwerp.