Hunted: Forensic psychologist Dr Karla Lopez on her role in Ten’s hit new reality series

A top forensic psychologist and star of new TV series Hunted tells of the one common tool that exposes criminals every time.

As one of Australia’s top forensic psychologists, Dr Karla Lopez is an expert on what makes people — particularly criminals — tick.

It’s a skill set she’s bringing to the fore as one of the leading experts on Ten’s new hit TV reality TV series Hunted, pitched by the network as “Australia’s real life game of cat and mouse”.

Dr Karla Lopez from the fly-on-the-wall TV series Hunted.

In the fly-on-the wall series, Dr Lopez, who has worked for Victoria Police and the Department of Justice, is one of the show’s expert hunters — an elite team chasing 18 fugitives who are aiming to evade capture for 21 days in order to win a share of $100,000.

When it comes to evading capture, there’s one common tool, Dr Lopez says, that gives real-life people, as well as TV fugitives, away every time.

“I’m not convinced that people are necessarily aware that they carry a personal tracker with them every day — i.e. our mobile phone.

“When I first started worked in covert policing, it was kind of like the 101 - how you disable that, this where you don’t ever take your phone if you don’t want to be detected etc.

“Because your phone knows where you are, where you’ve been and where you’re most likely to go on any given day.

“And you know, it’s pretty easy for your phone to tell others that.”

The Hunted fugitives run from their van in Melbourne’s Federation Square.

Dr Lopez said part of her role on the series is to dig deep into what motivates the fugitives.

“From a psychological angle, there are things that we do out of habit and love, so reaching out to loved ones or seeking comfort, things that are comforting to us, that are familiar, that gives us the small routines that we get into.

“Those things can become quite predictable, to someone who knows you quite well.

“And that’s ultimately what we’re trying to do with our fugitives, really trying to get to know what makes them tick, what motivates them, who their greatest supporters are and who they could rely on during the coming months.”

During her decade-long role at Victoria Police, Dr Lopez pioneered an evidence-based risk assessment program for sex offenders.

Her biggest passion, she says, “is keeping the country safe”.

Working with a professor, she put together a tool, including a manual and training package, for police officers.

The elite team of experts in the new Ten series Hunted.

“As I always say, what the police can do is a lot more than what I could do on my own. So, you know, one approach would have been to essentially conduct the assessment myself and provided by the police around that.

“But again, the volumes that the police deal with, it’s a much more sensible approach to essentially upskill police, to use a tool like that with the data that it has available to them and be able to make sound operational decisions themselves.”

Dr Lopez’s starring role on the hit TV show has come with its fair share of surprises — especially in terms of the attitude of the fugitives towards the experts.

“One of the things that has surprised me is a little bit of, I think, overconfidence in terms of, you know, over-estimating their ability to kind of guess what the hunters already know or what information they can get about them and underestimating what we can actually do.”

Dr Lopez said “flexibility and problem solving on the run” as well as an ability to “pivot decisively” is crucial for the fugitives if they want to succeed.

Hunted airs from Sunday to Tuesday each week, at 7.30pm, only on 10 and 10 Play on Demand.