Essay On Criminal Profiling

“White male, age thirty-five, drives a blue Ford F-150, and might have experienced bullying and isolation as a child, etc.” Everyone who has ever watched the news, watched a criminal justice based show, or read investigation reports has heard/read someone say a sentence of what the suspect looks like, drives, problems that might have led to their break, and any other type of information they would think could help aid in finding the offender. But what else does a criminal profiler bring to the investigation beside description of the suspect. Does psychology play a role in the profiler’s part? Is it just physical and material aspects that they can figure out? How do they even begin to put pieces of the puzzle together that other cops can’t?

Such as what is profiling? When it was first originated a profile was made up of very basic characteristics, such as age and previous convictions, that the offender might have. Profiles generally are used to trim a list of suspects down, focus on the investigation, and establish interrogation or interview strategies (Snook et al, 2008). Yet there are two different approaches a profiler could use to make their inferences. Some profilers tend to use more of the clinical/psychological perspective of their training to make their profiles, which they could use their psychology training or knowledge of criminal behavior to build their profile. Others tend to use the more logical side of things and use more a statistical based approach, which they would use someone’s previous convictions of their suspect to the suspect list (Snook et al, 2008). In most criminal based shows, such as criminal minds, they use a combination of both approaches. They look at every possibility. CPs study the photos taken at the crime scene and can use their psychology training to see if he had an abnormalities and/or abuse in the first eighteen years of his/her life that could have transpired into adult