Alumni Scene
Of The Mind
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t is human nature to be interested in the “Why” of a crime – the grislier, the more intriguing. But for Dr Majeed Khader, this interest goes far beyond sheer curiosity. As Director of the Home Team Behavioural Sciences and Deputy Director of The Police Psychological Services Division, Dr Majeed leads his team in the forensic psychological investigation of acts of criminal behaviour. “Years ago, we were involved in the psychological autopsy (PA) of the pilot involved in the crash of a plane,” he says. “There was concern about whether this was suicide, murder or an aviation accident. “Undertaking this PA, we interviewed large numbers of pilots, management staff and family members, and reviewed flight recordings and black box recordings. After this psychological investigation, our team was able to construct a detailed profile of the deceased pilot’s mindset, hobbies, interests, motivations, inclinations, temperament, stressors and life challenges, and this proved to be very useful to the investigators.”
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Upon graduation from the National University of Singapore (NUS) in 1993, Dr Majeed started as a research assistant and trainee psychologist with the Singapore Police Force (SPF). In the two decades he has been there, Dr Majeed has worked his way up to Chief Psychologist. He manages the Home Team Behavioural Sciences Centre as its Director while being concurrently Deputy Commander of the Crisis Negotiation Unit in the SPF. He also teaches a course on criminal and forensic psychology at the Nanyang Technological University, as well as criminal profiling at the Life Sciences Undergraduate programme in NUS, hosted by the Department of Biological Sciences. The 46 year-old father of two graduated from NUS in 1993 with an Honours degree in Psychology. “I had excellent professors – Dr Chua Fook Kee, Professor John Elliott, Dr George Bishop, Dr Ramada Singh – who grilled us constantly on research methods, statistics and psychology,” he recalls with enthusiasm. “We were thrown into the deep end of the pool.
We did empirical projects every year up to Honours year, which really built our confidence and ability in experimental methods, sampling methods, survey design and statistics.” All that made for a good foundation, but police work had not crossed Dr Majeed’s mind for a career. “Prof Elliott and my senior tutor (now SMU faculty) Professor David Chan told me that the police were looking for someone to be a research assistant and trainee psychologist for two years,” he remembers. “At the time, my plan was to be a management consultant and to earn a lot of money, so two years was a good start. I took up the job and the rest is history. I pioneered and set up the police psychological unit and have stayed for 20 years. I love what I do and can put my hand on my heart to say ‘I have made a difference’.” Today, Dr Majeed and his team of 12 psychologists at SPF handle a spectrum of work and deal with a cross-section of offenders. “We do criminal profiling, crisis negotiation, morale assessment, leadership selection, and employee support and crisis response work,” he says. “We have seen a lot and
Photo courtesy of Dr Majeed Khader; Photo illustration: Shutterstock
What goes through the mind of an offender? It is the job of Dr Majeed Khader (Arts and Social Sciences ’93) to know. by Theresa Tan
I love what I do and can put my hand on my heart to say ‘I have made a difference.’
spoken to many: rapists, paedophiles, terrorists, molesters, ah longs (loansharks) and young offenders. Over the years, we have also responded to many critical incidents and lifeand-death situations. “It means we are constantly on our feet, 24/7, 365 days a year. I think we are probably the most operational group of psychologists in Singapore! Work is tough, and gory at times, and there is a lot to do, but it bonds the team tightly. Ask anyone who has been with us, they will tell you that being a police psychologist is always a unique experience. The force is a great place to work in. And with the cops, there is a lot of humour around.” Dr Majeed’s team handles behavioural sciences research and training for the Home Team. “A major programme we have is the
Crisis Leadership programme. Since the Ministry of Home Affairs is very involved with major crisis handling, for example, the Nicoll Highway collapse, the crash of MI185 in Palembang, the crash of SQ006 in Taipei, the Asian tsunami, terrorism et cetera, we have developed a very strong programme for how leaders can and should lead in times of crisis. And because we are an in-house unit, we get the anecdotes and feel the ‘psychological fidelity’ of the people who were there.” Other types of tasks the unit does includes working with prisons and narcotics psychologists to develop profiles of drug users, or conducting research on Internet extremism and the national resilience of Singaporeans.
Psychology, for the uninformed, seems like a “soft approach” to mental issues. But Dr Majeed describes it as “mind-ware to support the hardware”. “We understand people and human behaviour well. We use this knowledge to make our three O’s better: our organisations, operations and officers.” He cites two examples: “One, support for police operations. When we profile criminals, we get into their mindsets, motivations, codes of behaviour, organisational structures and their operational methods. We then partner with operations, intelligence and investigative officers on how better to tactically and strategically deal with the crime. “Two, when we use psychology to support our officers, we build their life skills and their resilience. Work in the Home Team can be hard. I see the officers as the unsung heroes of our society. They get complaints for things they do wrong now and then, but few compliments when they do get it right, which is really most of the time. It is not by chance that we have one of best safest and secure conditions in the world. We use psychology to support our organisations by assessing and developing strong leaders so that these leaders can support and lead their men well.” Dr Majeed derives satisfaction from seeing his students and younger colleagues share the passion – “knowing that some will make that impact someday and change the world in his own way.” His work in dealing with real-life issues with real people satisfies him as much as putting Singapore on the radar of international psychologists, as Asian Director of the US-based Society of Police and Criminal Psychology. “We organised two large-scale conferences in 2010 and 2013, which allowed us to showcase the good work of our people.” he says. The psychologist, who is married to his Psychology Honours classmate, relaxes by jamming with friends in the force, cooking and listening to his collection of vinyls. “I am putting together a small music studio in my HDB flat to record my own music,” he confesses. “I think I meet the criteria for a mid-life crisis, but I would not have it any other way.” OCT–DEC 2013
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