Criminal Profiling in Solving Violent

Criminal Profiling in Solving Violent Crimes There is no dearth of television shows and movies dealing with the criminal justice system featuring actual police and investigative works, the penal system, court room proceedings and other aspects of this important mans of imposing law and order in a civil society. From these features, the public has been made aware of what ensues when crimes are committed from the investigation thereto, processing of suspects, prosecution, all the way to incarceration, release, probation and parole.

Of particular interest in the criminal justice system is how violent crimes are solved via criminal profiling or oftentimes referred to as psychological profiling. Criminal profiling is the process of using available information about a crime and crime scene to compose a psychological portrait of the unknown perpetrator of the crime (Muller 234).

This kind of criminal investigation requires well-educated, highly-trained and skilled criminal profilers that can look at "scenes of the crime, and take into account factors such as the state of the crime scene, what weapons (if any) were used in the crime, and what was done and said to the victim (Muller 234)." From what has been gathered in the crime scene, criminal profilers, use various scientific methods and procedures including inductive and deductive reasoning to come up with their theories and prove or disprove these.

In doing so, criminal profilers ensure that testing and postulation are backed by solid evidence and proofs as well as going through the rigorous processes using the highest standards and best practices in the field. Although criminal profiling is also called psychological profiling and thus can be deemed as somewhat an "inexact science" compared to the pure sciences of biology, chemistry, physics, etc., this method investigating and solving criminal acts especially those of violent nature is always backed by logic, proofs, solid and tangible evidences.

Presentation of these proofs and evidences help to ensure that the three major goals of criminal profiling are achieved (Holmes and Holmes 9): To provide the criminal justice system with a social and psychological assessment of the offender; To provide the criminal justice system with a psychological evaluation of belongings found in the possession of the offender; and To provide interviewing suggestions and strategies.

Having the above goals in mind, the criminal profiler does not only go into the mind of the violent criminal -- or any criminal investigated, but also looks at the factors surrounding the root cause of why such criminal behavior occurred. Clearly, there has to be a solid understanding of deviant behaviors and how they are triggered to the point where these deviants end up committing violent crimes.

Thus, "it is important to come to a general understanding of the type of person who would commit an offense such as a lust murder or spree killing. Inherent within the premise of the validity and reliability of a profile is that the person who commits these crimes has a personality that reflects pathology. (Holmes and Holmes 4)" Like any other processes, systems, and/or methodologies, there are several ones involved also in criminal profiling. The two basic ones are criminal investigative analysis and behavioral evidence analysis.

The former "employs the psychological typologies to organize information and construct a profile. The premise holds that elements of the crime scene represent the offender's personality and approach aims to provide the most likely characteristics, both personality and demographic, possessed by the unknown offender for the police investigation.

(Young 15)." On the other hand, "behavioral evidence analysis also follows the belief that crime scene characteristics provide information about the offender, and uses a deductive, rather than inductive, approach (Young 17)." There are often conflicts as to which approach is better; however, the answer to this is usually dependent on the situation of crime on hand.

Consequently, like any good criminal profiler, the type of analysis use should not be limited but rather comprise of several methods that are complementary to each other and prove crime theories without any question or doubt. Using multi-faceted approach to criminal profiling ensures that no stone has been left unturned in order to guarantee that solving violent crimes will stand to the highest scrutiny and validation. Application of criminal profiling methods is done to types of behavior associated with organized and disorganized criminal acts.

An organized act is one that has been meticulous planned and conceived from beginning to end. The organized.