The Use of Profiling to Combat Terrorism

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Profiling by Israel security forces is a very important factor when it comes to fighting terrorism. Profiling allows for certain types of people with similar characteristics to be grouped and identified to help understand why certain people commit different crimes. Because the profile of a terrorist has changed over time, Israel now uses a type of profiling that is predictive. Instead of looking at the crime after it has already been committed to profile the criminal, Israel uses predictive profiling to determine the suspicion and threat of everybody before any criminal activity is able to occur. Although the United States has learned many things from Israel regarding combating terrorism, the use of profiling, constant searches, and securely fencing off its borders are not concepts that many Americans would happily adopt. Privacy is extremely important to most Americans and the idea of “big brother” would not satisfy the majority.

The use of profiling as an investigative technique has been used for many years. Profiling is a prominent tool used in the field of criminal justice and criminology to better understand behavior, personality characteristics, and certain types of criminals. Using such characteristics as religion, race and sex have always been frowned upon but sometimes are needed to better categorize certain types of crimes and offenders. The three major goals of profiling are to provide a social and psychological assessment of the offender, to provide a psychological evaluation of belongings in possession by the offender, and to provide interviewing suggestions and strategies when captured. (Oconnor, 2011) By achieving each of these goals when profiling different offenders, links between certain characteristics of offe...

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...filing is a great tool for determining threats, it is not something I think Americans would take well too. Citizens of the United States want to feel protected but I feel most are to worried about themselves to allow the government to encroach on their right to privacy and right against unlawful searches to worry about the greater good of the country.

Works Cited

1.Oconnor, T. (2011). The history of criminal profiling. Retrieved from http://www.drtomoconnor.com/4050/4050lect01.htm

2.Oconnor, T. (2011). Terrorist profiling. Retrieved from http://www.drtomoconnor.com/3030/3030lect07secure.htm

3.Anti-terror techniques and training. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.acmeinvestigations.com/anti-terror.htm

4.(n.d.). Terrorism and profiling. Security Solutions, Retrieved from http://www.crmi.com.au/pdf/Security_Solutions-TERRORISM_AND_PREDICTIVE_PROFILING.pdf

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