An Analysis of Criminal Profiling

Criminal profiling Criminal profiling is the growth of an investigation through gathering information concerning a crime scene and an offence to assemble a psychosomatic picture of the recognized architect of the crime. Simply, it is the concluding of a criminal’s or an offender’s feature from his or her offence scene traits. For instance, an investigator might attempt to conclude a criminal’s gender, occupation history or age from the way he or she have accomplished during the duration the crime was conducted. It helps an investigator to identify unknown offenders and establish a psychological portrait of the offender, depending on the crime committed such as mixed, disorganized or organized crimes. Criminal profiling has been associated with offender profiling, particular profile analysis and psychological profiling. Typically, it is utilized with crimes where the criminal’s identity is unrecognized and with serious forms of crime where the criminal’s identity is unrecognized and with serious forms of crimes such a rape or murder. In addition, investigators are also likely to address crime series, which are series of crimes that are deemed to have been committed by the same criminal. Types of criminal profiling The form of chores that an investigator might be requested to completed rely on the type of criminal profiling.

1. Geographical profiling

Geographical profiling concerns how the criminal got into crime and from the crime. A geographical profiling investigator could be requested to determine the possible location of a criminal home from the geography of his or her acknowledged crimes. Geographic profiling is mainly utilized to determine the possible area of a criminal’s residence from the location of the crime. It is very useful when an investigator has a pool of suspects because it enable the investigator to narrow down and prioritize a region of investigation. Through utilizing the locations of a criminal’s crime as his or her central point, a geographical investigator attempts to predict the region in which the criminal resides. The investigator examines the routine activities of the criminal and draw conclusion bases on them. For instance, the Routine Activities Theory and Pattern are important to geographical profiling because they focus on individual daily life activities. Similarly, the geographical profiling approach assumes that a criminal will offend in a region with which he or she is familiar, meaning that while an offender is carrying out his or her daily life, he or she will recognize likely targets. The Routine Activities Theory and Pattern connect to the notion in geographical profiling that criminals have a mental or a cognitive map of their geographical regions. Furthermore, these theories has resulted to the growth in criminal psychology of geographical profiling principles and definitions of sorts of criminals. Nevertheless, the efficiency of the geographic profiling has not obtained a boundless deal of attention, although there are some evidence concerning its accuracy. For instance, between the year 1991-2001 Rossmo’s profiling process, Rigel was utilized in the investigation of 1426 offense's. The effectiveness of geographical profiling was examined through comparing the size of the entire region over which the crimes happened to the size of the region starting to be looked for on the ground of geographical profile. The criminal’s home was determined having looked approximately just the central 5percent of the crime region. Its credibility appeared to vary relying in the sort of crime.

2. Profiling of a criminal personal feature

Profiling of a criminal persona features is mostly associated with the term “Criminal profiling.” It concerns identifying unknown criminal and providing details of the criminal’s possible features as concluded from the criminal traits at the offence scene. Indeed, a criminal profiling investigator might be requested to advise the police on the manner that a certain criminal or suspect is supposed to be interviewed. The only difference between geographical profiling and criminal profiling is that geographical profiling concerns identifying the area of the crime while criminal profiling identify the personal characteristics of the criminal. The usefulness of criminal profiling depends on the extent of which profiling has been executed in practice. For instance, if constantly profiles are found not to be accurate in some aspects, it may result to police loosing entire faith in their worth because inaccurate criminal profile has the likelihood to provide the wrong impression about the investigation. Furthermore, the extreme important criticism of criminal profiling is that there is no much research that show the types of profiling to be reliable and valid. Hence, it is extremely hard to identify how efficient criminal profiling is because it is grounded on assertions. For example, when profiling the features of an individual, the investigator is asserting that the traits shown at the offence scene are a result of the individual traits rather than dogged by the situation. To effectively profile personal features from offence scene trait there would have to be some aspects of the crime scene trait that are more illustrative of the individual than of the situation. Today, criminal profiling is neither a broadly allowed law enforcement practice, nor a worldwide investigative practice, however, there is some facts to back up its utilization of various forms of crime such as rape and murder. Moreover, criminal profiling as an art is not intended to be a law enforcement solution, though law enforcement agencies such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) are starting to acknowledge the advantages of this approach as a reliable investigative instrument. Over the years, there has been rising utilization of criminal profiling, although it is still a contentious tool. Not every person holds that developing a hypothetical image of a criminal or a suspect makes an impact to solving crimes because it is hard to recognize whether an investigator is working with an effective investigative tool until it is compared with the suspect. In conclusion, criminal profiling has attracted the interest of the criminal psychology students and the public. However, it is a discipline in its early stages that needs a lot of growth, especially in association to developing a solid hypothetical ground and examining its efficiency in a methodologically rigorous manner. The efficiency of a criminal profile is wrong or even to some extent may insufficient mislead police, thus permitting the criminal to run away from detection and making an innocent individual surfer. Nevertheless, it does not mean that criminal profiling should be ignored or never to be utilized by police. It should be handled with caution for it to be completely effective. Moreover, it should not be irrationally allowed or depended because it may sometime not have any association to the reality. Work Cited Alison, L., Bennel, C., Ormerod, D., & Macros, A. ‘The Personality Paradox in Offender Profiling’: Psychology, Public policy, and Law, 2002. 8(1), 115-135 Grubin, D Offender Profiling Journal of Forensic Psychiatry , 1995. 6, 259 – 263 Rossmo, D.K. Geographic Profiling in In J.L. Jackson, and D.A. Bekerian,Offender Profiling: Theory, Research and Practice. John Wiley and Sons: Chichester, 1997. 159 -176

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