Forensic Psychology and Criminal Profiling

One of the major hurdles blocking the recognition of criminal profiling is due to not having enough commanding material, with no evidence to back up the approach of logical lessons to claim the profilers which lack the credentials to form psychological supposition about criminal behaviour. Some of the bylaw administration agencies in most countries around the globe are still somewhat skeptical about the criminal profilers’ duties. The data for the criminal such as the Railway Killer’s is commonly only asked for in situations where the police enforcement has drained all the other tips, at times comprising of astrologers and psychics (Holmes and Holmes, 1996). Procedures such as pathological DNA examination have turned out to be necessary to contemporary criminal analysis, feasibly because a person can point to the resilient logical ground on which they are based.

Even though the investigational proof is not yet awesome, researches like the ones carried out by Finkel and Pinizzotto (1990) show that provision of a criminal’s file might have some legitimacy. The two formed the statement based on a case study of some serious highly-rated ranked offences, but their data lacked reliability because it does not show bibliographies or sources (references) for the information that was gathered. The key difficulty concerning this allegation is the fact that it is virtuously undependable. It is believed that investigation bodies like the FBI refuse to give out statistic information regarding the failures and successes of the profiles which they always give. Even though statistics like 70% achievement level have been distributed (Shachtman and Ressler, 1992), there is yet to be a profile put before investigators to authenticate this assertion. ...

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...ter that make use of a methodology that was able to be gauged (using larger samples than in the US this was covered in the lecture) similar to if not IP (investigative psychology) and come up with a “profile’’. Therefore, in regard to this, it can be concluded that, it is more of a science than an art, especially in the United Kingdom.

Works Cited

Canter, D. (1989). Offender Profiles. Psychologist, 2, 12-16.

Holmes, R. M.,& Holmes, S. T. (1996). Profiling violent Crimes: An Investigative Tool (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Pinizzotto, A. J.,& Finkel, N. J. (1990). Criminal personality profiling :An outcome and process study. Law and Human Behaviour, 14, 215-233.

Ressler, R. K., & Shachtman, T. (1992). Whoever fights monsters. New York: Pocket Books.

Wilson, P., & Soothill, K. (1996). Psychological profiling: Red, green or amber?

Police Journal, 69, 12-20.