I'm doing my book report on "Psychic Criminology" a book about the use of psychics in law enforcement. My research brought me across the following article regarding the use of Remote Viewing by the CIA.
http://www.mceagle.com/remote-viewing/refs/science/air/hyman.html
First a little background information. Parapsychology is the branch of psychology studying various kinds of psychic phenomena, known to the scientific community at large as anomalous mental phenomena. Parapsychology research encompasses various abilities including telepathy (communication between minds), clairvoyance (acquiring information without the use of the 5 known senses), Precognition (predicting something in the future), Dowsing (locating something, generally water or minerals with a dowsing rod or a pendulum), Psychometry (acquiring information about the history of an object by touching the object), and Remote viewing (the ability to describe very distant objects, really this is a form of clairvoyance).
From the 1970's through 1995 the CIA funded a large number of projects studying the effectiveness of remote viewing. Collectively, these studies became known as "Project Stargate." Many former military intelligence officers, as well as those from the private sector were recruited to spy on the Russians from underground military bases. Other uses included spying on super-criminals (known terrorists, and criminals who migrate from country to country), These projects did not become declassified until 1995 after an extensive statistical analysis demonstrated that there was little reason to continue to pay such large sums of money (in the billions) for research that was plagued with methodological flaws, and were not valid or useful. Dr. Jessica Utts, and Dr. Ray Hyman were the lead analysts. Dr. Utts recommended the tests continue, with Dr. Hyman recommending that they be ceased. The CIA sided with Dr. Hyman's analysis (included in the above link) and the military stopped its research regarding the use of remote viewing to solve crimes, investigate foreign criminals, and military enemies. (information retrieved from http://www.remoteviewed.com as well as the link above)
Many psychics use these studies, and the use of psychics and remote viewers by the military for such a long period as proof that there is documentation of psychic phenomena (anomalous mental phenomena). Although this information is interesting there is little scientific documentation of any kind on abilities of psychics. The initial experiments done at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI), as well as Dr. J. B. Rhine's laboratory (at Duke University) have been demonstrated to have profound methodological problems. Thus far almost all the information available is anecdotal evidence. It is argued that attempting to scientifically test these abilities acts as a mental block towards the psychic's abilities. Others claim that the cumulative negative energy of skeptics is one cause of the inability of psychics claims to be documented in a lab setting. Significant findings in lab settings have not proven to be repeatable.
Additionally over the years numerous magicians have debunked various famous psychics by demonstrating that they are using the exact same techniques which magicians imply to trick their audience. Most notably including Israeli psychic Uri Gellar.
I have never really considered the role of psychic phenomena in the criminal justice system. Reading this post got me interested in parapsychology and the actual graduate programs available in this area of psychology. I tried to search for schools that offered programs in parapsychology but I did not come across much information. Most of the ones I did find were outside of the US. US schools offer courses in it, but don't usually have a program that specializes in parapsychology. As most people can probably rationalize with, this area of study is particularly controversial because of its uncertainty and its belief in the unseen. This is a website I found describing reasons why parapsychology is so controversial: http://www.parapsych.org/faq_file3.html