Formal Profiling Essay

Formal profiling is said to be started in 1956 when the New York City police asked help from psychiatrist James Brussel to study crime scene photos and notes of the “mad bomber” George Metesky, who was able to elude the police for 16 years (Winerman, 2004). According to the same article, some of the psychiatrist's judgments were based on psychological ideas and since then, the police has started to confer with the experts in the field to construct profiles of difficult- to- catch lawbreakers. Much of the criminal profiling field developed within the law enforcement community--particularly the FBI (Winerman, 2004). The writing in the American Psychological Association states that the purpose is to help investigators inspect data and records to create a culprit description, what can consist of psychological variables such as personality traits, psychopathologies, and behavior patterns, as well as demographic variables such as age, race or geographic location (2004). Investigators might use profiling to narrow down a field of suspects or figure out how to interrogate a suspect already in custody (Winerman, 2004). Therefore, it has been used as a tool to contribute in catching lawbreakers.
According to FBI agent McCary, the basic premise is that behavior reflects personality (Winerman, 2004), but a lot has changed in the field since devastating
Therefore, they have a tremendous responsibility and expectation to spot anyone whose interest is to harm the country. As the previous examples show, there are no certain guidelines, though, to predict human behavior tendencies, especially, merely basing it on looks, judging one’s skin color, nationality, ethnicity or clothing. Using profiling as a tool has not been effective in spotting a terrorist, due to the diversity of the group, so it will just clog the security lines at the airport and may cause anger in law abiding citizen’s and