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  • Essay / Offender profiling as an investigative tool in criminology

    Dowden, Bennell, and Bloomfield believe that offender profiling is a process by which an offender's behavioral, sociodemographic, and personality characteristics are predicted based on evidence at the crime scene. Baker & Napier also suggested that the purpose of offender profiling as an investigative method used by the FBI "is to provide offender characteristics to help investigators narrow the field of suspects based on scene characteristics of the crime and initial information from the investigation. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Additionally, Snook et al. stated that, based on a misconception of the criminal profile as an investigative tool and an overestimation of its results, people believe that criminal profiles can predict the characteristics of a criminal from the crime scene. The purpose of this article is to examine the use of offender profiling as an investigative tool and its accuracy, reliability, and validity in criminal investigations. It can be assumed that profiling has a number of definitions that differ from each other and therefore can have different meanings. as part of the categorization of requests. For example, psychological profiling involves examining the offender's behaviors, motivations, emotions, and mental history as a guide to further investigation. Conversely, investigative profiling includes an overview of the examination of a criminal case to present a descriptive model of the characteristics that characterize the possible perpetrator(s) of a particular crime(s) being analyzed. Criminal profiling is an investigative tool that determines the characteristics of the offender from the crime scene and their behavior. It is a process of inference that involves, among other things, the analysis of the offender's behavior, his interactions with the crime scene, the offender and his choice of weapon. Therefore, criminal profiling can be defined as an assessment of a crime scene, which can help in understanding the behaviors exhibited in the order of that crime and from an investigation of these behaviors. According to Turvey, he identifies two main points of profiling, divided by their objectives and main concern. The first is the investigation phase, which involves the perceptual characteristics of the unknown offender for the known crime. He suggested that the investigation stage has five main objectives: reduce the number of viable suspects and help prioritize the investigation of remaining suspects, help establish links between potentially linked crimes by identifying scene indicators crime and behavioral patterns (i.e., MO and signature), help assess the potential for escalation of criminal behaviors from nuisance to more serious or violent crimes (i.e. harassment, stalking, voyeurism), to provide investigators with relevant leads and strategies and to help keep the overall investigation on track. Hicks & Sales stated that profiling an unidentified offender involves three steps: collecting evidence at a crime scene by police officers, constructing a behavioral, demographic and attitudinal profile of the offender based on this evidence, and write a report that can assist in a criminal investigation. A series of studies have been conducted to investigate the reliability, validity, and accuracy of criminal investigation. profiling as a tool designed to help law enforcement prioritize search areas, and the most basic questionWhen it comes to profiling, the question is whether the technique actually works and whether the profilers' predictions of the unknown offender were accurate. A study to examine the hypothesis that offenders who display similar crime scene behaviors are likely to have similar personal and sociodemographic characteristics was conducted by Mokros and Alison. They studied this hypothesis in a sample of 100 British rapists whose behavior at the crime scene was classified according to the appearance of various variables (use of a weapon, use of concealment, etc.) and indexed according to their similarity with each other. The results of the analysis revealed that rapists who displayed similar offending behavior were no longer similar in terms of sociodemographic variables (occupation, living situation, ethnicity, etc.), criminal history, or age at time of the offense. Another study conducted to determine whether it was possible to predict whether homicide perpetrators had a criminal record based on the characteristics of their victim was carried out by Santtila, Runtti, and Mokros. Santilla et al. compared crime scene and offender characteristics with victim variables for 502 solved single-victim or single-offender homicides that occurred in Finland between 1980 and 1994. Data for each case were coded as function of the presence or absence of 8 variables of the victim (criminal record of the victim, “violent” criminal record of the victim, relationship situation, alcoholism, intoxication, psychiatric disorders, unemployment, housing status) and 2 variables of the offender (criminal record of the offender, “violent” criminal record of the offender). All variables relating to victims occurring in less than 5% of cases were excluded; other victim variables that had a significant association with offender variables were subjected to multivariate analysis. Results indicated that although most offenders (71%) had no criminal record, there was a significant association between victims with a criminal record and the perpetrator with a criminal record. Results also revealed a strong relationship between increases in victims' antisocial variables and situational characteristics (such as intoxication) and whether the offender had a prior conviction for a violent crime. These research findings support the relationship between certain crime scene/victim variables and certain offender characteristics that is inherent to profiler effectiveness. Snook et al. suggest that the use of criminal profiling in criminal investigations has continued to increase despite limited empirical evidence that it is effective. To support his statement, Snook et al. conducted a two-part narrative review and meta-analysis of the published CP literature. The results of the narrative analysis suggest that the CP literature relies largely on common-sense justifications. Results of the first meta-analysis indicate that groups of self-described experienced profilers and investigators did not outperform control groups in predicting cognitive processes, physical attributes, criminal behaviors, or social habits and backgrounds offenders, although they were slightly better at predicting all offenders. characteristics of offenders. Results from the second meta-analysis indicate that self-reported profilers were not significantly better at predicting offending behavior, but outperformed comparison groups when it came to predicting offending behavior.offenders' overall characteristics, cognitive processes, physical attributes, and social history and habits. Therefore, one might assume that the profiler's ability to compose an accurate profile of an unknown offender does not rely on the profiler's specialized knowledge. To study the accuracy of criminal personality profiles provided by profilers, as opposed to non-profilers, Pinizzotto and Finkel conducted a study on a sample consisting of 28 individuals divided into five subgroups. Group A included 4 profiling experts, who taught profiling to FBI police detectives. Group B consisted of 6 police detective profilers who completed a one-year course at the FBI Behavioral Sciences Unit. Six police detectives not trained in offender profiling made up Group C, while Group D included 6 clinical psychologists with no experience in criminal investigations or offender profiling. Finally, Group E consisted of 6 undergraduate university students who received $10 each for their participation in the study. Participants were provided with information and materials about two separate crimes that took place and were later solved by police. Of these investigations, one related to a homicide and the other to a sexual offense. Participants were asked to complete a multitude of tasks for this study testing their ability to determine which information was most relevant and their ability to write a detailed profile of the offender. Participants were also asked to complete a multiple-choice questionnaire on different offender variables (e.g., gender, age, race, etc.) and were asked to rank a list of possible offenders in order of most likely to least likely to have committed the crime. offense. Results indicated that profilers provided significantly more detailed profiles, were more specific in their written profile of the sex offender, and were more accurate in their assessment of potential offenders. However, no differences were found in profile accuracy for homicide cases based on expertise, with expert profilers not being significantly more accurate than university students. Another study aimed at measuring profile accuracy and investigative experience as a factor in accurately constructing a criminal profile The profile was carried out by Kocsis et al. They compared a group of Irish police officers to two control groups of university students in a simulated profiling experiment. The results of this experiment showed no significant differences between groups in the number of features correctly predicted and also suggest that survey experience may not be a necessary factor in constructing precise criminal profile. Another study that addressed the issue of validity and accuracy profiling was the study conducted by Kocsis & Middledorp. The purpose of their research was to determine if a relationship existed between the perceived accuracy of information in an offender's profile and belief in profiling. The 353 participants in this study were Australian undergraduate students (52% male, 48% female) with an average age of 19.7 years, with no specific knowledge of criminal profiling or forensic psychology . Each of the participants received a survey in 3 sections. The first section of the survey consisted of a cover page and a “belief in profiling” scale. There were three different versions of the cover page, one that promoted the effectiveness and value of profiling, one that denigrated and criticized it, and a page of.