Criminal profiling is an investigative technique used to identify the personality and behavioral characteristics of unidentified criminals. It is thus concerned with helping investigators know the kind of person who has committed a crime and, in this way, mitigate the effect of the crime or be able to suspect certain individuals. For instance, in a kidnapping ordeal where the kidnapper maintains contact through the telephone, profilers can analyze the words and ideas of the kidnapper to understand the emotions and psychology of the kidnapper. This will help investigators avoid doing something that may make the kidnapper harm the victim (Douglas, Ressler, Burgess & Hartman, 1996, p. 402). The idea of criminal profiling is usually presented to the public in terms of overly convincing fiction and films. Examples of these are works by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes and such films as criminal minds and silence of the lambs (Firefly, 2009, p.1). The ideas presented by these works of art are, in a way, misleading. They make the public put undeserved confidence in criminal profiling. In this essay, we look at criminal profiling and its contribution to the alteration of chance.
There are two main types of criminal profiling. The first is inductive profiling, which refers to the integration of crime characteristics such as demographic and physical characteristics with the knowledge of emotional and behavioral characteristics of criminals to obtain details about a crime committed by an unknown criminal. This method sometimes uses information given by criminals who have committed similar crimes in the past. This description of inductive profiling clearly shows that, for profiling to yield results, the profiler has to ignore chance and act purely on the principles of profiling. This is because if chance is considered, the method will yield a myriad of possibilities. Inductive profiling is characterized by some problems due to its use of actual victim information such as age and gender to make ‘confident’ subjective guesses about the criminal. These include emotional drive and the resultant behavior of the perpetrator during the criminal. For instance, an investigation could be required to be carried out on a rape victim who is unable to share the information related to the crime. Suppose the victim is a girl who is five years old. In such a case, profiling experts are likely to come up with a high profile male pedophile or rapist who has been perpetrating such acts for a long time. This induction will be made in utter ignorance of the fact that the offence could have been perpetrated by an experimenter who has never done such an offence before (Turvey 1999, p. 34). This could be because the latter profile lacks enough supportive information and the fact that it is less unlikely. In this way, the profilers will alter the meaning of chance to fit their preconceived ideas about the crime. Thus, this method is characterized by bias of the profiler. This is seen in the example above where the crime could have been perpetrated by a beginner. The mentioned induction will also be made under the ignorance of the chance that the offence could have been committed by a female. It is possible for a female to be psychologically sick to the extent that she can rape a female child. It can thus be concluded that inductive profiling is based on the shaping of chance to match the preconceived ideas of the profiler (Firefly, 2009, p.1).
The second type of profiling is deductive profiling that deals with the interpretation of tangible evidence like photographs, reports and video recordings to come up with the behavior of the perpetrator in the crime scene and deduce crime aspects like motivation, emotion etcetera. Deductive profiling is far better than inductive profiling since it uses objective evidence to help in reconstructing the crime. The efficacy of deductive crime profiling is thus very high. The analysis of crime scene evidence using the deductive crime profiling approach is characterized with significant assumptions of certain occurrences in the crime scene. A piece of evidence could hold a myriad of possible occurrences in the crime scene (Firefly, 2009, p. 1). Thus, in order to come up with helpful information about the crime. The profilers may ignore chances of certain occurrences in the crime. For instance, in a case of homicide in which the victim is beheaded and a message left, the reconstruction of the crime scene will be dependent on previous similar homicide cases. If, for example, there exists a murderer who leaves the message as his signature, and there also exists a murderer whose signature is the beheading of his victims, the murder has to be reconstructed with an explanation pointing to one murderer. In this case, the chance of the involvement of the other murderer will be disregarded. The chance that another murderer using other peoples’ signatures as his/her alibi may also be disregarded. Thus, according to this example, chance will be altered to fit the reconstruction that seems most likely to the profilers. The criminal profile that the deductive analysis comes up with must be in accordance of the pieces of evidence obtained and it must also agree with the reconstruction of the crime. Since different pieces of evidence may be left at the crime scene to confuse profilers and investigators, it sometimes proves to be hard to differentiate between authentic and staged evidence. In an attempt to use such kind of evidence, the investigators and profilers are forced to take chances on their selection of the staged and real evidence (Douglas et al, 1996, p. 148).
The massive criticism that faces the effectiveness of criminal profiling is indubitably deserved. However, the efficacy of criminal profiling is dependent on the conditions of the crime being examined. In fact, profiling is applied in a limited number of crimes, specifically those that prove difficult for other investigative techniques. For instance, kidnappings where the locations of the kidnapper and victim are unknown, hostages, crimes that are committed professionally leaving insubstantial evidence etcetera. It can therefore be argued that it is the nature of the problems that necessitate criminal profiling that make it ignore the existence of other chances in its undertakings. This has a major effect on its accuracy but its essentialness is unquestionable. Criminal profiling therefore models chance to fit the instincts and analytic conclusions of the profiler and it can not be carried out in a way that the profiler can be sure that his conclusion is true except in conditions where the evidence points unequivocally to the profile built. In a nutshell, criminal profiling is a necessary mediocrity applied in desperate investigative conditions.
Reference List
Douglas, J., Ressler, R., Burgess, A., & Hartman, C. (1996), Criminal Profiling from Crime Scene Analysis. Behavioral Science & The Law. Web.
Firefly, M. (2009). Criminal Profiling: Is It Science? Young Australian sceptics. Web.
Turvey, B. (1999). Criminal Profiling: An Introduction to Behavioral Evidence Analysis. Psychiatry Online. Web.