Criminal Profiling- CASE ASSESSMENT GUIDEBOOK

Criminal Profiling- CASE ASSESSMENT GUIDEBOOK

Introduction

Criminal Profiling for the investigators have been a field which narrows and make the investigation easy for the investigators and law enforcement to make their work more feasible. Criminal Profiling, in several areas have been used successfully. The specific identity of the offender is not necessarily evaluated by the Profiling; rather it focuses on certain personality and behavioral characteristic of the person who is likely to be liable for the crime.

Profiling has been used by many officers in the law enforcements to a variety of settings like hostage taking (Reiser, 1982), identifying the anonymous letter writers (Casey-Owens, 1984) or personnel who are involved in the spoken or written violence threats (Miron & Douglas, 1979). The important aspect of profiling is that, by profiling techniques Arsonists and Rapists also lend themselves. The law enforcement builds profile of the offender through vigilant interview about rapist behavior. One important role behind this approach is that the examiners might be able to recognize, what kind of person for the offense is responsible and shows the behavior reflects the personality. For the law enforcement personnel, these crimes creates much terror and chaos for them as these type of crime create much publicity and have motiveless nature.

There are two disciplines which are generally used by the specialists for profiling murderers. That is the mental health clinicians, who seek through psychiatric concepts o explain the actions and personality of a criminal, and the law enforcements agents who through investigative concepts determines the behavioral patterns.

Criminal Profiling

Currently, the techniques used by the law enforcement are able to describe more about the typical murderer. As a criminal investigator conducting a behavioral profiling, the field of investigating has been such admired that many of the fictional characters have been made on it. It has been described as an educated attempt as a collection of leads to provide the specific information and knowledge about the suspect and a behavioral pattern of the biographical sketch, the tendencies and trends. What we really look for from a suspect is the behavioral and personality characteristics on the analysis done on the crime he or she has committed. It is quite similar to the clinicians who do treatment and make a diagnosis of plan: the situation is reconstructed, data are assessed and collected, hypothesis formulated, the testing and developing of a profile and the reporting back the results (Geberth, 1996, p. 710).

Building a Criminal Profile

What is most mandatory for the generation of criminal profiles and analyzing the crime scene, there are certain process stages for the construction and description of profiles, which is also conducted by the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime which is colloquially known as NCAVC, since 1970s (Ressler et al., 1985). For the procedure, there are five primary stages for the criminal profile process with a sixth goal or stage being the suspect apprehension.

Input stage of Profiling

For accurate profiling, comprehensive case materials are necessary. The complete description and synopsis of the crime scene ...