OFFENDER PROFILING.

Running head: OFFENDER PROFILING 1
Offender Profiling
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OFFENDER PROFILING 2
Offender Profiling
Introduction
Crime has been a critical factor leading to insecurity all over the world for quite an
extended period. At least in every society, there is an instance of a criminal offense such as rape,
murder, robbery with violence, and even fraud. Offender profiling has been used in the recent
past to identify the core suspects in all crimes committed. However, the measure was not well
known until an FBI academy based in America, Quantico, started publicizing the action towards
the criminal investigation (Vettor, 2011). In other words, offender profiling is a way of analyzing
a crime scene of crimes one has committed and generating inferences which can be used to
conclude in terms of characteristics of the offender. Again, offender profiling could have been as
a result of basing the crimes committed by one to draw their personality and behavioral
characteristics. Thus it is a technique used by police and detectives to narrow down to a specific
person when the case of the investigation had no evidence left at the crime scene. However, in
only point to a suspect with certain features and not directly to someone who committed the
offense (Beauregard, 2010). Recently the evidence from the technique has been used to provide
proof in courtrooms and this has adversely affected and crippled the court decisions although we
can't say it should be done with. This review focuses on offender profiling in specific, analyzing
the crime scene and drawing conclusions rather than general investigations and carrying out
studies outside the scene.
Historical background
When people hear of about offender profiling, what comes in their minds includes TV
programs like ‘Profilers’ or ‘criminal Minds’ and movies like Silence of lambs’. However such
productions portray glamorous ways to capture the minds of criminals unlike in real world

OFFENDER PROFILING 3
scenarios (Morrison, Wiggins, Bond, & Tyler, 2013). The capability of analyzing scenes of
crime and applying the obtained data to catch prospective culprits forms the base of modern
offender profiling. First applied in 1950s when people discovered some similarities and patterns
in particular behaviors of crime (Canter, Hammond, Youngs, & Juszczak, 2013). The process
applies patterns of crime scenes and possible data on profiles to target and net unknown
criminals. However as much the process seems to work on some known cases, it involves both
pros and cons. Psychological profiling is considered to be the method of identifying suspects
through the use of an individual’s emotional, mental and characteristics of personality which is
based on things that are left or done in crime scenes.
Studies show that offender profiling is based on the premise that personality is a
reflection of behavior. Two key assumptions are made during the process and these are;
homology and behavior consistency. Homology involves the idea that crimes that have similarity
get committed by offenders who are also similar. Behavior consistency involves the idea that
various crimes of one offender will tend to remain similar (Fox, & Farrington, 2012). However,
behavioral and psychology science advances have proofed that the fundamental assumptions
relied upon by criminal profiling like the assumption of homology have become outdated. In
most crime cases, the approaches that have been applied by law enforcers such as the FBI
assume that the personality of a person determines their behavior and not situational factors.
Since the 1960s, this is an assumption that research on psychology recognizes as being a mistake
(Fox, & Farrington, 2012). Many studies have also confirmed that profilers have shown high
levels of reluctance in participating in research that seek to find out more on the accuracy of
offender profiling.