Essay On Offender Profiling

Offender profiling also known as criminal profiling is based on the principle that the characteristics of an offender can be worked out by examining the characteristics of their offences. As Ainsworth (2001) puts it, “profiling generally refers to the process of using all the available information about a crime, a crime scene, and a victim in order to compose a profile of the (as yet) unknown perpetrator.” Eye witness testimony refers to an account given by people of an event they have witnessed. They may be required to give a description at a trial of the event they witnessed; this will include identification of perpetrators, details of the crime scene and so on. There is a very high chance of the suspect being convicted as Juries tend to
This approach was initially based on a study where 36 convicted serial killers and rapists in American prisons. The aim was to identify the major personality characteristics of the offenders and how they differed from non-offenders. Unstructured interviews were conducted and information about the crime scene was gathered (Johnstone & Ward, 2009). The information collected revealed that crimes were either premeditated and planned or sudden and unrehearsed. It was concluded that the crime scene could be used to help identify the offender, as the crime scenes revealed clear evidence of whether offences had been committed by organised or disorganized offenders. The FBI was able to develop models that would result in the profile of the offender and produced a system for classifying several serious crimes e.g. murder and
It also takes into account factors about the suspect that may have influenced them into committing the crime. There their behaviours and psychological state. It can be argued that this approach attempts to truly understand the individual through the crime scene (Dwyer, 2001). Although canter criticises this research and says that aspects of each typology always occur together and that to try and separate them makes a false distinction. It was based on interviews with sex offenders and therefore cannot be generalised to all criminals. It is very deterministic to presume a criminal will easily fall into one of the categories as unanticipated events may happen during the crime which may cause the offender to develop a different pattern. This research cannot be replicated in different countries as it was not a structured method which therefore reduces the