Criminal Profiling Research Paper

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When being faced with a crime the police investigator has certain information to base their decisions for the best way forward in order to identify the culprit. The investigators responsibility is to draw conclusions from the available information about the crime that will facilitate enquiries. The investigator might decide that they need more information before any conclusions can be drawn, but a time will come where inferences need to be made. These are inferences that allow the relationship between the offender and the offence to be proven. Often these inferences are of a direct kind: a fingerprint found at the crime scene can be linked to the fingerprint of a known person in police records, or an eyewitness may recognize a person and send …show more content…

The myth that is broadcasted attempts to describe this process as originating just from the speculations of US special agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. These thoughts have been termed ‘profiling’, or more fully ‘offender profiling’, ‘psychological profiling’ or ‘criminal personality profiling’. These terms have taken on a quasi-mystical quality, with even scholarly authors seeing the need to introduce discussions of ‘profiling’ with reference to imaginary …show more content…

It does have its own particular challenges and limitations, it could be these problems and challenges that have made people think that the process of offender profiling is different than contexts. The major downside is that the material in which the inference is based, is restricted to what is available during an investigation. This can be very detailed information, such as the details of a rapist’s sexual behavior. Other information that comes along with it is the time, place, and the nature of the victim. But in order for the inferences to be useful to the investigators they must connect directly with the things that police officers can actually act on. Where an offender lives is a clear example of useful information to an investigator, but more indirect material such as how others may regard the offender or his or her likely skills and domestic circumstances may also be good information. In many crime cases, why an offender carried out an offence can be general interest to

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