In criminology, profiling is a psychological portrait of a person suspected of committing a series of violent crimes. A comprehensive method of personal and social accentuations is used in the course of criminal psychodiagnostic. Multiple crimes can be linked to a specific criminal, and the profile can be used to predict the future actions of the identified criminal.
Profiling tends to have many reasons which prove its effectiveness. The first reason is the easiness with which the personalities of past offenders may be identified. Unlike a strand of DNA, profiling cannot easily recognize the culprit but instead serves as a guide to correlate behavior patterns to traits that would define the perpetrator (Eaton, 2016). Thus, profiling helps link criminals with committed crimes much faster with the help of patterns.
Another proof of the effectiveness of profiling is the formation of the general portrait of the criminal. In many cases, a lot of criminals may share common characteristics, and the reason for this is the psychological process behind every crime (Eaton, 2016). However, this can be advantageous to the investigation process. Thus, profiling might facilitate the establishment of criteria that connects criminals and alleviate the investigation process.
The last proof of the effectiveness of profiling is the establishment of factors that lead to crimes. For example, profiling a criminal can determine various details such as victims, places, and times (Eaton, 2016). As a matter of fact, many circumstances of crimes may be similar, which may make it easier to create a pattern of the crime. Arranging given information can help investigators capture not only the culprit but also prevent future occurrences of crimes.
Hence, profiling may thus provide great value when used with traditional investigation and forensic techniques. Different resources, such as instances and evidence, may shed light on specific patterns that comprise an overall profile of a criminal. This not only helps the investigation process but also prevents future incidents.
Reference
Eaton, T. V., & Korach, S. (2016). A criminological profile of white-collar crime.Journal of Applied Business Research, 32(1), 129-142.