Criminal Profiling : Behavioral and Investigative Tool

Criminal Profiling: Criminal profiling is rampant in our modern age. Some would argue that in a nation of 300 million potential criminals, Criminal profilers are a must to narrow down the list of suspects for any given crime is a godsend. The police do not have time to pursue every possible lead with empirical evidence, and must at times rely on common profiles of criminals know as a criminal profile. The definition of criminal profiling is a behavioral and investigative tool that helps investigators to profile an unknown subjects or offenders. This is a phenomenon of generalization, which we will discuss later.

With the popularity and benefit of criminal profiling has produced more profiling jobs, criminal profiling TV shows, profiler movies, criminal profiling education, degrees, literature, and profiling books. There are many individuals who want to become actual criminal profilers with the intent to help society by seeking careers in criminal profiling. Other related topics surrounding criminal profiling is criminal research, criminal analysis, criminal forensic, criminal psychology, criminal justice and criminal law enforcement. It is also common to see well known profilers to be called to court by high profile criminal attorneys to speak against the witness and to help nabbing the worst serial killers to date.

Back to generalization. This term is a common cognitive process that is for the most part quite useful. If a child had to discover that every object with laces and a general shoe like shape was a shoe, it would take quite a lot of time to go through each object individually, instead the mind takes and generalizes. The brain looks for certain shoe like traits and generalizes them to a large category of objects in the world. This allows us to talk about “shoes” as a category rather than a collection of completely discrete objects. Generalization practices are not only use in criminal profiling, but also widely used in statistics profiling, DNA profiling, police profiling, psychological profiling, career profiling, customer profiling, FBI profiling and more.

When it comes to criminal offenders, there are a number of different categorical markers that can lead investigators to their potential suspects more easily for a criminal investigation. These markers take the form of various characteristics that through empirical analysis are found to be common in a significant percent of the people that commit a given crime. Crime scenes are also studied and relate to the criminal profile.

For example, most serial murderers are white males. This information was gathered through careful criminal analysis of data. Looking further at the group of serial murderers, one will find a prevalent love of military history and paraphernalia, particularly relating to various fascist regimes. This comes down to a fascination with weapons in general. Beyond that, it is common for serial murderers to be single, and to have trouble relating to others. These varying markers help police to narrow down searches.

They can of course have their disadvantages. If the police too narrowly focus on the markers of the criminals profile they have in mind, they could easily miss many potential suspects. One common, negative outcome of profiling is the term everyone knows racial profiling. There are many criminal stories with ridiculous instances where n incorrect racial profile was used. It is also important to note, a profile does not hold up as evidence that any person committed a crime. It’s weak, and provides no physical proof of what happened. The other, potentially more salient worry about criminal profiling is the potential for discriminatory practices. This criminal profiling method can turn an innocent person into a profiling victim.

Suppose white males who are obsessed with weapons commit most gun crime. In that situation, does it also follow that all white males who are obsessed with weapons will commit gun crime? No, of course not, there are millions of gun-obsessed Caucasians who would never consider hurting another person. In many real life instances, these criminal profiles can lead to discriminatory practices. For instance, discrimination occurs on a bias of race, class, religion, even ethnic origin. People of Middle Eastern descent are far more likely to be searched at an airport screening, because of famous instances of middle-easterners committing heinous acts involving planes. Also, a huge percentage of young black men are involved in the prison system as a result of racial profiling leading to disproportionate prosecution.

Criminal profiling is a very clever, very human thing to do. It is important to keep in mind, the profile of a criminal mind as any mind is quite complex. A caution for criminal profiling is it is only an application and should be used as such along with other methods. Generalization can help or hinder us, so criminal profiling must be kept in check.