Criminal Profiling

Term Paper # 99984

Criminology

Criminal Profiling

This paper explores criminal profiling and its benefits.

1,582 words () | 7 sources | APA | 2007 United States

Paper Summary:

The paper relates that criminal profiling material is useful in crimes not solvable by conventional police methods. The paper describes how criminal profiling has helped to reopen cases, has given shortcuts for investigations that have proved accurate and has also helped in the monitoring of known serious offenders in the community. The paper also shows how it is an imperfect but still promising science and discusses the challenges faced by investigators who are aware that many dangerous perpetrators are not in their data systems but remain dangerous to others.

Outline:
Introduction
An Imperfect but Promising Science
Victim Testimony and Other Data
When Profiling Leads Nowhere
Concluding Discussion

From the Paper:

"Matters of criminal profiling tend to have a certain glamour in public understanding due to various media influences. As McGrath comments "the popular image of the criminal profiler is that of a retired FBI agent who has written several books highlighting past profiling efforts" (2000:315). More accurately, one finds mundane persons involved in an applied social science rooted in forensic psychology and psychiatry, actuarial science, data harvested from criminal justice and mental health facilities, and information technology, towards plotted tendencies and patterns of use to investigators of usually very serious crimes whose perpetrators a strong risk to society. The field is also intriguing, too, for insight into dynamic and static forces, as criminal profiles alter over time while some patterns remain constant. The field retains knowledge from the 1940s as much as its practitioners are alert to changes in criminal patterns due to changes in society, how people fit into newer laws and legal systems, and what are seen as serious crimes warranting research or which bring repeated requests for information (Kocsis:2006:49-64). Criminal profiling material is useful in crimes not solvable by conventional police methods."

Sample of Sources Used:

Dolan, M. and M. Doyle. (2000). Violence Risk Prediction - Clinical and Actuarial Measures and the Role of the Psychopathy Checklist. British J of Psychiatry, 117, 303-311.
Flora, R. (2001). How to Work with Sex Offenders - a Handbook for Criminal Justice, Human Service and Mental Health Professionals. NY, London and Oxford: Haworth Clinical Practice Press.
Hare, R.D. (1999). Without Conscience - the Disturbing World of the Psychopaths among Us. NY: Guilford.
Hayward, R.R. and J.I. Warren. (2000). The Sexually Violent Offender - Impulsive or Ritualistic? Aggression and Violent Behaviour, 28, 267-279.
Kocsis, R.N. (2006). Criminal Profiling - Principles and Practice. Totowa, NJ: Humana.