Offender Profiling Research Paper
Definitions
Offender profiling is a method of identifying the perpetrator of a crime based on an analysis of the nature of the offense and the manner in which it was committed. Various aspects of the criminal's personality makeup are determined from his or her choices before, during, and after the crime. This information is combined with other relevant details and physical evidence, and then compared with the characteristics of known personality types and mental abnormalities to develop a practical working description of the offender.
[edit] History
The origins of profiling can be traced back to as early as the Middle Ages, with the inquisitors trying to “profile” heretics. Jacob Fries, Cesare Lombroso, Alphonse Bertillon, Hans Gross …show more content…
The profile helped police to track down George Metesky in Waterbury, Connecticut; he had worked for Con Ed in the 1930s. He was arrested in January 1957 and confessed immediately. The police found Brussel’s profile most accurate when they met the heavy, single, Catholic, and foreign-born Metesky. When the police told him to get dressed, he went to his bedroom and returned wearing a double-breasted suit, fully buttoned, just as Dr. Brussel had predicted. However, Malcolm Gladwell has written that offender profiling is not a science at all, but is couched in such ambiguous language that it can support almost any interpretation; and about Brussel …show more content…
For example, Richard Jewell was extensively investigated (and attacked in the media) following the Centennial Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta. This not only caused great distress to Jewell, but delayed identifying the true culprit, Eric Robert Rudolph. Focusing on Jewell is a false positive. The added cost of the false positive on Jewell was that FBI and local police gave up the search for other suspects for quite a while. The converse of the false positive is the false negative, when investigators are blinded by an erroneous aspect of a profile, and clear a suspect who is actually guilty. Criminals who engage in the calculating use of violence and threats of violence to trigger emotional responses such as humiliation, fear, and terror do so to coerce behavior such as obedience and submission. However, Eric Robert Rudolph exhibited traits that set him apart from typical criminals, even political terrorists, and demonstrated behavior representative of criminal sexual sadists as sex and punishment were central themes of his crimes with the focus "on domination, control, humiliation, pain, injury, and violence, or a combination of these themes, as a means to elicit suffering." The personal records of criminal sexual sadists frequently involve complex, elaborate, detailed scenarios that include specific methods of capture, control, locations, and
Offender profiling is a method of identifying the perpetrator of a crime based on an analysis of the nature of the offense and the manner in which it was committed. Various aspects of the criminal's personality makeup are determined from his or her choices before, during, and after the crime. This information is combined with other relevant details and physical evidence, and then compared with the characteristics of known personality types and mental abnormalities to develop a practical working description of the offender.
[edit] History
The origins of profiling can be traced back to as early as the Middle Ages, with the inquisitors trying to “profile” heretics. Jacob Fries, Cesare Lombroso, Alphonse Bertillon, Hans Gross …show more content…
The profile helped police to track down George Metesky in Waterbury, Connecticut; he had worked for Con Ed in the 1930s. He was arrested in January 1957 and confessed immediately. The police found Brussel’s profile most accurate when they met the heavy, single, Catholic, and foreign-born Metesky. When the police told him to get dressed, he went to his bedroom and returned wearing a double-breasted suit, fully buttoned, just as Dr. Brussel had predicted. However, Malcolm Gladwell has written that offender profiling is not a science at all, but is couched in such ambiguous language that it can support almost any interpretation; and about Brussel …show more content…
For example, Richard Jewell was extensively investigated (and attacked in the media) following the Centennial Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta. This not only caused great distress to Jewell, but delayed identifying the true culprit, Eric Robert Rudolph. Focusing on Jewell is a false positive. The added cost of the false positive on Jewell was that FBI and local police gave up the search for other suspects for quite a while. The converse of the false positive is the false negative, when investigators are blinded by an erroneous aspect of a profile, and clear a suspect who is actually guilty. Criminals who engage in the calculating use of violence and threats of violence to trigger emotional responses such as humiliation, fear, and terror do so to coerce behavior such as obedience and submission. However, Eric Robert Rudolph exhibited traits that set him apart from typical criminals, even political terrorists, and demonstrated behavior representative of criminal sexual sadists as sex and punishment were central themes of his crimes with the focus "on domination, control, humiliation, pain, injury, and violence, or a combination of these themes, as a means to elicit suffering." The personal records of criminal sexual sadists frequently involve complex, elaborate, detailed scenarios that include specific methods of capture, control, locations, and