Within the context of this paper, the concept of criminal profiling is revealed and described as a technique whereby the frequency characteristics of a criminal offender or offenders are predicted based on the behaviors exhibited in the commission of a crime. Criminal profiling is the process of investigating and examining criminal behavior in order to help identify the type of person responsible. Racial profiling is a huge abuse of criminal profiling.
This essay casts a critical eye over some of the assumptions which are often ignored and underlie recent appeals to the community in possible abuses of criminal profiling, how it can pose a problem for law enforcement and the community it serves. A brief overview of the historical experience and development of criminal profiling is also presented and illustrates that criminal profiling is abstractly old and investigative of the human race’s long-held fascination with the assessment and prediction of criminality. This essay is an attempt to create a reference text of applied knowledge about the deductive method of criminal profiling.
It includes the arrogant goal of laying out that method in a clear fashion while creating and exploring precise details about terminology and core profiling concepts. The other target of this work is to help firmly establish the basis for the relationship between behavioral evidence, physical evidence, and criminal profiling. Along the way, it is also expected that some of the many popular misconceptions about criminal profiling that may expectant in the illusory and non-illusory media can be effectively relegated to submission.
A concept of criminal profiling was prepared by the country’s criminologists, which was approved by the Government. It gave importance to an active state policy in the sphere of crime control and prevention, giving the necessary preconditions for carrying this out. It can be stated that, given the short period of restored statehood, much has been done in developing the preconditions for crime control and prevention.
This essay concludes by outlining some of the common applications and objectives of criminal profiles. Criminal profiling, also known as criminal stereotyping, is the insertion of racial or ethnic characteristics in shaping whether a person is considered likely to commit a particular type of crime. Towards the end of the 20th century in the United States, the practice became controversial among the general public as the potential for abuse by law enforcement came to light. Particularly it focuses upon the way in which appeals to community converge and collide with changing social relations, which may undermine their progressive potential.
Crime is a demoralizing and costly problem affecting our society. The victims of crime suffer injury, financial loss, and intimidation. Everyone is affected by higher prices for products, taxes, insurance premiums, and the sense of insecurity and fear that result from criminal acts. Criminal profiling includes an examination of the environmental, hereditary, or psychological causes of crime, modes of criminal investigation and conviction, and the efficacy of punishment or correction as compared with forms of treatment or rehabilitation. The serial killer or the sexual predator, whether truly crazy or simply bad, does not plan or finish out his evil in an empty negated, but on a stage where characteristics of the criminal may be inferred from things touched, from things done, from things taken, and from things left behind.
Civil rights experts are against the use of criminal profiling tactics by the police. They dispute that the disproportionate number of convicted minorities is due to “criminal profiling.” Contrasting this, it is disputed that including race as one of the several factors in suspect profiling is generally supported by the law enforcement community within the Western world. It is assumed that profiling based on “any” characteristic is a universal police tool and time-tested and that excluding race as a factor is insensible.
- Never be considered for any reason in police action.
- Never be considered the motivating factor for suspicion.
- Even if the race could be helpful, use of it may cause many more difficulties where the actual offender happened not to fit the race predicted by the model and law enforcement fails to capture the suspect.
- Only be considered when it is used to define a precise suspect in a specific crime and only when used in a manner like other physical descriptions (e.g., weight, hair color, distinguishing marks). This is often referred to as the “be on the lookout” omission.
It is sometimes essential to include racial factors in a way that may not be abruptly apparent from the above when facing hate crimes and the like, though it is very odd to think of situations where criminal profiling would aid policy decision-making in this framework.
But some suggest if a disproportional number of members of a race are, for example, stopped, arrested, or searched, compared to the general population or to other races, it is due to discrimination. Some also suggest that the government does not have the right to conduct criminal profiling. Since the majority of people of all races are law-abiding citizens, merely being of a race that a police officer believes to be more likely to commit a crime than another is not probable cause.
In addition, Constitution requires that all citizens be treated uniformly under the law. It has been disputed that this makes it unconstitutional for a delegate of the government to make decisions based on race. But some have opinions that police who focus their limited attention on one racial group allow criminals from other racial groups to go free. Critics claim racial profiling triumphed in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, as law enforcement initially focused time and resources on two men of Middle Eastern descent (though Timothy McVeigh was identified and arrested less than two days after the attack).
Basic considerations of criminal profiling have caused enormous confusion not only in the profiling community but also in public perception. The myths and half-truths regarding criminal profiling methods and practices are furthermore rampant in the popular media. These include misconceptions arranged in the minds of police officers on the street, detectives at the crime scene, criminologists in the lab, lawyers at trial, and judges on the bench.
It has also left the door open for the proliferation of many dangerously ill-equipped, unprincipled individuals into the practice of creating criminal profiles so that it brings us to my own motivation for bringing together all of these competent professional minds. I am a firm believer in the reality that criminal profiling must commence to professionalize and become more multidisciplinary and scientific. As criminal profiling becomes more time-honored as a forensic discipline, and as it becomes a more conventional part of the investigative and judicial process, those concerned have a responsibility to develop competency standards and practices and vigorous methods.
I think we also have a responsibility to see beyond reliance upon hazy references and subjective proficiency and agree to demonstrate liability for our methods. This is a responsibility because, in the forensic disciplines, our opinions and understandings are allowed to impact whether people are deprived of their liberties and efficiently whether they live or die. It becomes that simple. The courts, inconsistently bothering to question them at all, especially when they are affiliated with law enforcement, have taken a great deal from criminal profilers on belief up until now. But we have been abusing it with our lack of professionalism and our lack of proficiency.
Although profiling has been around in a variety of forms for a hundred years or more, we have not developed more consistent methods, we have not even performed capable scientific research, and we have not always been fully straightforward about the restrictions of our elucidations.
In terms of its evidential value, criminal profiling cannot dodge the problems of legal application if it is adduced to seek to show that, only on the basis of a profile created from the crime scene, it is more feasible that a particular defendant committed the crime. Some profilers could claim, on the basis of experience or any method, which they could single out the actual perpetrator. However, the facts outlined in this essay emphasize that because many contemporary profiling methods rely on a trait approach. Scrupulous configurations of demographic features may be predicted from an assessment of scrupulous configurations of precise behaviors occurring in short-term but highly distressing situations supposed to be an overly ambitious and dodgy possibility.
References
- Eric S. McCord, “Book Review of Criminal Profiling: An Introduction to Behavior Evidence”. Web.
- Brent E. Turvey, ” CRIMINAL PROFILING: AN INTRODUCTION TO BEHAVIORAL EVIDENCE ANALYSIS”. Web.
- William Hirstein,” Brain Fiction: Self-Deception and the Riddle of Confabulation”. Web.
- George B. Palermo, Richard N. Kocsis, “Offender Profiling: An Introduction to the Sociopsychological Analysis of Violent Crime”. Web.