Analysis of violent crimes

Violent Crimes Analysis

From the case study, the crimes that were committed by the Baseline killer like rape, murder and torture are crimes that are punishable by death sentences, life imprisonment or very long sentences; hence these crimes can be classified under felony. Felonies are usually the worst kinds of crimes in the society and they are normally directed towards other members of the society, and to protect the society as a whole, more often than not efforts to take these criminal elements away from the society are the main focus of the justice system.

This crime is under the violent crimes in terms of the component of the crime. It is worth noting that the criminal in this case used to shoot those who resisted his approaches, rape women, molest some victims and even carjack some. These are all crimes that are done in a violent manner and the compliance to the criminal activities is usually compelled rather than voluntary (Kristal Hwakins, 2012).

Behavior reflects personality

This is a term tat is majorly used in offender profiling or criminal profiling. This is an assumption that is usually used in unraveling of the homicide cases by the profilers. Here, the profiler will try to fins out as much as possible about the personality of the offender through posing questions about the behavior of the suspect in four phases as below:

The antecedent- this will be a quest to understand the plans, or the fancies that the criminal had before acting in the manner that he did. It will be more of finding out what the possible triggers to act were, for instance why the suspect acted on some days and not other days, or during some occasions and not other occasions.

The manner or the method-this will seek to know the type of victims that the suspect targeted and why. It also seeks to understand the methods of murder that the suspect used and the nature of these murders like stabbing, strangulation, shooting, drowning, torture to death among others and the ferocity of them.

Body disposal-this will seek to analyze the way the murderer disposed of the bodies and the patterns. For instance whether he preferred particular places to dispose the bodies, did he change the places of disposal, did he have a preferred method of disposal, any trophies that he left at the disposal sites and much more of such leading facts.

Post offense behavior-here the profiler will try to study the trends of the murderer after the offense has been committed. They will try to analyze whether the murderer tries to get the investigators to have him into the investigations through the media response or if the murderer keeps off the investigations.

These above are the major concerns for the profilers as they try to unravel a case. Once the suspect has been apprehended, this model of "behavior reflects personality" still goes on and the investigators will still want to check the trend in the baseline behavior to see whether the person harbors personality of guilty knowledge. This will be observed through the changes in the personality, the changing postures, touching of the nose, ears, tonal changes and such like behaviors (Anthony Lantosca, 2006).

physical evidence

Over the years the physical evidence has been used in reconstruction of crime scenes and in the process trying to understand the behavior pattern of the criminal. This reconstructions are aimed at understanding the trend in the behavior of the criminal and putting together any prior crime patterns that had the same trend, and in the process understanding the behavior of the criminal (Jerry Chisun W & Brent E. Turvey, 2000).

Modus operandi (MO) in investigation can be referred to as the mode of operation of the criminal while committing the crime. For instance, some outstanding MO can be detected in crime trend like use of duct tape, strangulation or use of particular kind of torture before finally killing the victims.

The term signature aspect is used to refer to unique behavior that is exhibited by the criminal that is peculiar to that particular criminal though may not be necessary in committing the crime. One of the most common signature aspects is the calling card, or tattooing of the dead bodies, use of excessive force, leaving notes behind and many more. These are not necessary in killing of victims but are a sign of claiming the crime (John E. Douglas, 2011).

The components of crime classification that I learnt about and are central in the crime classification are finding out the defining characteristics of the crimes and the crime scenes, this will be instrumental in telling the motive behind the crime and in the case of multiple motives, the most outstanding will guide the profiling. The other component is victimology which is the complete history of the victim which will help in unraveling whether it was just the victim that was targeted or was the property also a target in the crime (like in arson). This will make the profiler understand the criminal's activities with the victim or the property of the victim. Crime scene indicators is another strong aspect in crime classification and will include the number of crime scenes, the environment, place and the time, the number of offenders, organized or disorganized crime. These are the pertinent components of crime classification (John Douglas & Ann Burgess, 2006).

Crimes of John Wayne Gacy