Criminal Profiling

1257 Words3 Pages

Criminal profiling is one of few first things to think of when it comes to forensic psychology. Criminal profiling is featured in popular television shows such as in Law and Order and CSI. Often in those shows, the police officers were able to catch the criminals based on the criminal profile that forensic psychologists came up with. In a theory, the polices rely on criminal profiling to catch criminals, educate the public about a possible criminal, and confirm the witnesses’ accounts. Criminal profiling involves using various methods to guess a criminal’s background, behavior, and even preferences for the victims.

In the reality, the prominent focus of profiling is on the offender’s ethic race. Racial profiling allows people to target race in racial profiling in the belief that certain races commit more crimes than other races (Ridgeway, 2007). The minority groups such as African-Americans, Hispanic Americans, Japanese-Americans, and Arab Middle-East Americans (Persico, 2002). are often targeted because of their unique backgrounds, language and their appearance. Racial profiling is discriminatory, ineffective, and counter-productive to protecting American citizens.

Racial profiling exposes the American society’s discrimination towards an ethic group due to a political climate or a cultural “pecking order”. The pecking order occurs when larger cultural groups decide that the minority groups rank low in status and power. Historically minority groups became targets of unfair searching, arrests, and treatment at the hands of criminal justice system. For example, African-Americans (Lange, Johnson & Voas, 2005) endured more searches and arrests than white Americans. They spoke of this experience as “ driving while black” ( Lan...

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