Criminal Typology Essay

Two dark brown eyes stare intensely and continuously at the small square bedroom. They slowly shift from one section of the room to the next, examining every detail and every object. Suddenly, the eyes dart downwards to a pair of hands rustling through a folder. Out emerges documents, reports, sketches, and photographs. The hand raises the photograph in the air and the eyes drift from the photograph to the bedroom, comparing and analyzing every detail. The man’s brain is in full gear, cranking and grinding, trying to work as fast and effectively as it can to understand the crime scene, victim, and offender. People are probably wondering what this man is doing. The photograph that he has just pulled out were photos of a crime scene that had

just occurred recently in that bedroom. He was examining the crime scene to analyze the events that had happened there and to analyze both the victim and the perpetrator. He is what individuals would call a criminal profiler.
Criminal profiling has been around for years, almost decades. It is not a new tool that has been developed by law enforcement. However, recently, criminal profiling has become a more well-known and studied topic in the criminal justice system. According to Snook, Eastwood, Gendreau and et al (2007), criminal profiling was applied by 12 FBI profilers in approximately 1,000 cases per year. And even police officers in the United Kingdom are incorporating criminal profiling into their investigations more frequently. This is an extremely valuable tool available to law enforcement around the world to help aid them in the analysis of an offender. Even though there has been a rise in its use, criminal profiling is still under scrutiny and has become a very controversial topic. Many researchers believe that this tool is reliable, accurate, and a sound method for law enforcement. But, on the other hand, there are researchers that believe criminal profiles are just generalized guesses that are unreliable and not scientifically based.
What is criminal profiling anyway? Criminal profiling, also known as offender profiling, is described as a sub discipline of criminology rooted in behavioral and forensic science (Turvey, 2012). According to Kocsis and Palermo (2005), it is a method that uses observations and reflections as a way to reconstruct the events behind a crime scene by answering the basic questions: who, what, where, when, and how. It specifically tries to analyze crime behaviors to provide some form of understanding of the offender (Kocsis, Middledorp, & Karpin, 2008). Criminal profiling could potentially predict the personality, demographics, behavioral, physical, habitual, emotional, psychological, and even vocational characteristics of an offender (Bennell, Jones, Taylor, 2006; Turvey, 2012). They are not only able to determine these characteristics, but they are also able to interpret the modus operandi, signature, and possibly the motivation behind the crime (Kocsis & Palermo, 2005). Profilers are able to provide these characteristics and information because they closely examine the crime scene and the crime scene evidence.
Many people believe that criminal profilers are the one’s that can actually determine who the perpetrator is. However, this is unfortunately false. The job of the profiler is not to apprehend the suspect themselves, but to be used as a tool by law enforcement to narrow the field of potential suspects (Dabney, Dugan, Topalli, & et al, 2006). As stated above, profilers are able to provide specific characteristics about the offender that helps law enforcement reduce the scope of their search. Officers will take these characteristics and use them as a sort of screening process when they analyze existing apprehension reports for the suspect (Dabney, Dugan, Topalli, et al, 2006).
How does a criminal profiler come up with a profile? What is their process? According to both Snook, Cullen, Bennell, and et al (2008) and Dabney, Dugan, Topalli, and et al (2006), there are three main stages that they must go through in order to construct a profile of an unknown suspect. In the first step, the officers have to collect all the crime scene data they have and forward it to the profiler. Then in the second step, the profiler is able to conduct a full analysis of the crime scene data. Finally, in the last step, the profiler provides the officers with their predictions about the type of individual the officer are dealing with (Snook, Cullen, Bennell, & et al, 2008; Dabney, Dugan, Topalli, & et al, 2006).
However, according to Michael Boylan, the process that he outlines is different and more detailed. He outlines six general profiling basics that criminal profilers follow. The first step is input, which means that the profiler must gather and collect all or any crime scene information they can from the police officers (Boylan, 2015). The next step is the decision process. The profilers in this step must arrange all the input they received into meaningful patterns. It is necessary for them to do this because it will help them analyze both the victim and offender risk (Boylan, 2015). The third step is the crime assessment. The profiler conducts a reconstruction of the crime, crime scene, and the offender's motivation (Boylan, 2015). Then they have to develop their criminal profile. This means that the profilers must outline their findings from reconstructing the crime scene. They could include in their profile the possible motives, modus operandi, signature, or specific descriptions and characteristics of the offender (Boylan, 2015). Then, the profiler hands over the material to the officers so they can conduct a proper investigation. They use the profile as an aid or adjunct to their criminal investigation (Boylan, 2105). Then finally, the last step is apprehension. The accuracy must be checked and so does the description against the new information that emerges in the investigation. Once these are checked, the profiler has to change the profile accordingly (Boylan, 2015). This is how a proper profiler conducts his or her work when working with law enforcement on a case.
Current profiling practices use typology as a type of classification for crime scene behaviors and offender background characteristics.

The most used typology is the FBI’s organized-disorganized dichotomy (Snook, Cullen, Bennell, & et al, 2008). An organized offender are high functioning individuals that plan their crime, while a disorganized offender are low functioning individuals that commit unplanned crimes (Snook, Cullen, Bennell, & et al, 2008). This has been a major component in the practice of criminal profiling because it has finally brought some form of unity amongst criminal profilers. However, there are people that believe these to be false typologies. Snook, Cullen, Bennell, and et al (2008) explain that these typologies do not match the variation in offender behavior. For example, researchers examined 100 murder cases to try and categorize them as disorganized or organized. They found that only 39 cases fit those categories, the rest did not reveal distinct subsets (Snook, Cullen, Bennell, & et al, 2008). This means that a criminal does not all the time match up with just one category perfectly. In addition, researchers Vettor, Woodhams, and Beech (2013), said that these typologies were not even quantitatively tested or based on methodological research. This makes it hard for any law enforcement to actually rely on these

typologies.
Not only are there problems when it comes to classification, but there are also criticisms about the information they contain. Many people believe the work they do is basic common knowledge that any bartender might guess (Kocsis & Palermo, 2005). This means that their line of work is seen as very easy, not scientifically based, or effective. Anyone on the street can just observe someone and make generalized guesses that could be right in the end. In society, people see this with psychics. They try to make “cold readings”, however, it is just the individual using their observational skills to make semi-ambiguous statements that may relate to another individual based on observation (Kocsis, 2010). According to Boylan (2015), even law enforcement personnel believe these very accusations. A police detective stated that he thought criminal profiling was just smoke and mirror (Boylan, 2015). Smoke and mirror refers to something that may look good at first glance, but in the end it is a scam that is not actually effective at all.