Offender Profile Essay

There are quite a few steps for an investigator when determining a profile for an offender. The first step is for the investigator to gather all the current information related to the crime. This includes all of the evidence, facts about the actual crime, and even statements from witnesses. The analysis of this information should be very thorough, because the more information the investigator has, the better the chances for the profile being correct. Once all of the information is obtained and analyzed, the investigator should start to answer questions which could be related to the case. Such questions include: What is the motive? Where and when did the crime take place? How did he/she commit the crime? Was a weapon involved? By answering these questions the investigator attempts to get inside the mind of the offender to determine if there are any patterns. The investigator will also attempt to determine the characteristics of the offender as well as their behavior from answering these questions. With the current information as well as the potential personality and motive, the investigator then creates the profile. This profile contains information such as the offenders age, sex, race, and motive. This information is then compared to potential suspects to see if any qualify. This

As the years passed, a certain process or procedure was developed which created steps on how to create a profile. This became known as the “criminal profile generating process”. In this process, there are five different primary stages, with one extra stage for when the suspect is captured. The stages in order are: the profiling input state, the decision processing stage, the crime assessment stage, the offender profile stage, the investigation stage, and the final one is the apprehension stage (Criminal Profiling from Crime Scene