Usefulness of criminal profiling
Criminal profiling is an
effective investigating mechanism to recognize probable suspect when crime
occurs. Criminal profiling is usually used by law enforcement agencies when
crook’s identity is unidentified and with serious criminal felonies such as
murder, sexual stabbing.
We normally watch movies, TV shows that glorifies the
role of profilers in tracking down serial killers, child abusers, and
kidnappers. But these sources do not highlights accurate pictures how criminal
profiling work. In true sense, profiling is a dominant approach to resolve a
crime by rigorous analysis of crime scene.
Major goals of criminal profiling are to give basic
information to the police with the features of the criminal such as age, race,
personality, employment and marital status, to suggest any possessions the
offender may have that would associate him with the crime scene and to advice
interviewing tactics and suggestions the police may use when interrogating a
suspect.
There are four main approaches to criminal profiling.
These include:
The
geographical approach: This approach looks at patterns in the location and
timing of crimes to make decisions about links between crimes and suggestions
about where criminals live and work.
Investigative
psychology: Investigative officers use this after completing geographical
profiling. Officers establish psychological theories and procedures of analysis
to predict lawbreaker characteristics from offending behaviour.
The
typological approach: This involves looking at the features of crime scenes to
allocate criminals to different groupings.
The clinical
approach: This approach uses understandings from psychiatry and clinical
psychology to support investigation where a criminal is thought to be suffering
from a mental illness of other psychological deformity.
The process of criminal profiling can be categorized into
five stages:
Profiling inputs: Collecting all the information about
the crime.
Decision processing: Information gathered in the initial
stage is being organized in order to categorise the crime by type and style.
Crime assessment: After briefing all the information
gathered in previous steps, the crime assessment is made.
The offender profile: This focuses on theorizing about
the type of a person who committed crime
Investigative use: Criminal profilers prepare a report
for investigators so that they will focus on finding criminal, that matches
characteristics in the profile and it can be used for planning an interview
process of suspects.
It can be said that by detailed study of the features of
a crime and how a crime has been committed, a criminal profiler is in position
to identify the culprit. To comprehend the evidence, a profiler uses reasoning
approach. That includes inductive and
deductive reasoning. Inductive reasoning uses statistics and relies on
comparing a crime to past. Deductive reasoning is based on the evidence.
In condensing the facts, criminal profiling is highly
supportive procedure to detect and capture criminals. It describes the
behaviour of criminal before they involve in high level criminal act. In fact,
it is effectual procedure for crime scene analysis. Criminal profiling is a
blend of sociological, psychiatric, psychological, and criminological
disciplines.
Comments
Post a Comment