Unit 4 Assignment

Unit 4 Assignment-The approaches to psychological profiling

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Unit 4 Assignment-The approaches to psychological profiling

Psychological profile:

A psychological profile is a tool to identify different kind of perpetrator by the crime investigators. Psychological profiling started for the first time by the behavior science unit of the Federal Bureau of investigation during the 1960s. Psychological profiling is used for violent criminal behaviors and investigation for the serial bombing, kidnapping, seri8al rape, murder and product tampering (Holmes & Holmes, 2008).

There are various types of psychological profile.

Offender profiling:

Offender profiling is also known as psychological profiling and this is an investigation technique that is used by the police to investigate serious crimes. It includes the examinations of the crime and the crime scene to identify the preparators. There are two important approaches to this type of profiling. One is the bottom-up approach and the other is the top-down approach (Ainsworth, 2013).

The top-down approach includes careful investigation of the crime scene and the evidence are used to draw a conclusion regarding the offender. The offender’s profile is set by looking at other cases like where the criminal is being interviewed. The information in the profile is build up from top-down. The top down is based on data that are used to identify the characteristics of the offenders. These data are compared to each other based on certain aspects of the crime. The purpose of this comparison is to identify aspects of the crime and a similar pattern to identify the crime. It is mostly used in serious crime like murder and rape (Ainsworth, 2013). Bottom-up is a data-based investigation that looks at other data collected about similar crimes and predicts the characteristics of the offenders (Ainsworth, 2013).

Victim profiling:

Victim profiling is a set of techniques and approaches that are used to predict the characteristics of an unidentified offender. Evidence is collected from the scene of the crime and by analyzing those evidence the personality behavior and demographic character of the offender are identified. It generally identifies the cause and the effect relationship of the crime, witness, and offender. The information for the crime scene is used to portray the image of the offenders. The information collected at the crime scene is the nature of the weapon used and the circumstance of the victim (Nykodym, Taylor, & Vilela, 2005).

The approaches that are used in this type form of profiling are geographic profiling, investigative psychology, crime scene analyses, and the diagnostic evaluation. The evaluations are mostly based on clinical judgments. Crime scene analyses are the most important and popular techniques used in victim profiling. It is bawds on deductive reasoning and pattern identification and intuitive thinking (Nykodym, Taylor, & Vilela, 2005).

Suspect-based profiling:

This profiling pattern is derived from the system collection of personality, behavioral, demography, and cognitive data. The psychological features of the offender are usually analyzed in this approach of investigations. Crime activities such as drug trafficking, hijacking a plane or detonating a bomb is the investigation of similar crimes. The general appearances of the offender like age, the pattern of behavior and dresses or manner are usually investigated (Milne & Bull, 1999).

The Psychological Autopsy:

Psychological Autopsy is a procedure that is profiling that is done after a person’s death to determine the mental health of the individual prior to death. For instance, it is used to identify the reasons for the death that whether that was suicide or autoerotic stimulation. The survival of an incident usually want to know that the cause of the death of their loved ones that it happened due to suicide or due to a drug overdose. This procedure of investigation is initially introduced to clarify deaths that are ambiguous (Milne & Bull, 1999).

This approach is used to identify what might be in the mind of the person who is deceased. There are two basic approaches used in this investigation procedure, one is the suicide psychological Autopsy and the other is the equivocal death Psychological Autopsy. The goal of suicide psychological Autopsy is to identify the psychological reason behind the suicide. While the goal of the equivocal death Psychological Autopsy is to clarify the reasons and the manners of death. The death might not be a suicide and the manner of death is clarified. In legal contexts, this approach is followed to establish legal guilt and certain factors are investigation like the job pattern that might be responsible the death of the individual or any personal issue that triggered the suicide (Milne & Bull, 1999).

Psychological profiling:

Psychological Profiling is referred to the collection of information that is about a known individual who is believed to be dangerous or who is posing threat to the general community. In many cases, the identity of that individual is not known but there is evidence that show that he or she creates a threat and made a clear target. There are two procedures that are used in psychological profiling and these two procedures are quite overlapping. One is the risk assessment and the other is the threat assessment. Threat assessment is used to investigate whether an actual threat is carried out and risk assessment is conducted to find out whether that particular individual is risky for himself or for others. Both of this procedure is conducted using various measures for evaluation, background checks, interview and observations (Milne & Bull, 1999).

Clinical portioners are also be involved in the investigation process and they prepare an extensive report on the mantel characteristic of the individual being investigated. The intelligence and military organizations use an interview from that individual in order to investigate through psychological profiling (Milne & Bull, 1999).

The procedure of psychological profiling:

A psychological profile is built with the help of the evidence taken from the crime scene and this evidence are investigated through psychological theories. The forensic researcher uses various tools to investigate the crime through and those tools include interviewing the criminal and data adopted from the various crime of the same nature. The profile should have access to every possible information about the crime. That information includes the physical evidence, autopsy finding and photography of the crime scene and the victim (Holmes & Holmes, 2008).

The perpetrator not only leaves fingerprint as physical evidence in the area of crime but he or she left personality and behavioral clues that are helpful to collect evidence related to the crime. The tools that are used by the perpetrator to conduct the crime are investigated and these weapons reveal suspect behavior that can be linked with the personality of the perpetrator (Holmes & Holmes, 2008).

The personality of the individual who conducted the crime is a necessary step for profiling. The personality of the perpetrator reflects pathology and the plan and execution of the crime can be understood by the help of this evidence. The planning and mutilations mostly reflect on the personality of the criminal. The future behavior of the criminal is also predicted by the health practitioners are also noted down while profiling for future safety. The relationship between the agency who is investigated and the profile are carefully checked so that there won’t be any impact of that on the profiling and investigation (Holmes & Holmes, 2008).

However, profiling is structure based on either inductive or deductive approach. The inductive approach is based on an assumption about criminals and these assumptions are based on the personality of the criminals conducted similar crimes and it can be predicted that they also have similar personalities. While the deductive approach of investigation is conducted with a thorough investigation of the crime scene and all the possible evidence left there. The mental health of the offender is also predicted abed on the evidence and thus the cases are being investigated (Holmes & Holmes, 2008).

References

ADDIN ZOTERO_BIBL {"uncited":[],"omitted":[],"custom":[]} CSL_BIBLIOGRAPHY Ainsworth, P. (2013). Offender profiling and crime analysis. Willan.

Holmes, R. M., & Holmes, S. T. (2008). Profiling violent crimes: An investigative tool. Sage.

Milne, B., & Bull, R. (1999). Investigative interviewing: Psychology and practice. Wiley.

Nykodym, N., Taylor, R., & Vilela, J. (2005). Criminal profiling and insider cyber crime. Computer Law & Security Review, 21(5), 408–414.