Criminal and Psychological Profiling: Belief and Its Use

ABSTRACT

There is a belief that criminal profilers can predict a criminal’s characteristics from crime scene evidence. In this article, the author argued that this belief is more suitable and appropriate for psychological profiling than others. The role of the profiler, then, is to assist the police department in its investigations of the cases in which additional aid is sought for the successful resolution of a case, such as lust murder, rape, and the like. The successful profiler will blend his educational and training background to offer insight into the type of person who would commit the crime currently under investigation. It is, however, more than a simple list of suspected characteristics. The profiler will keep in mind his role in assisting the police by fulfilling fundamental processes in the profiling endeavor. The goals, then, are reached as much through education and training as they are through the acquired art of profiling itself.

Also potentially responsible are aspects of information processing such as reasoning errors, creating meaning out of ambiguous information, imitating good ideas, and inferring fact from imaginative. The author concluded that criminal profiling should be used as an investigative tool even though it lacks scientific support.

Keywords: criminal profiling; police investigations; belief formation; psychological