Argumentative Essay Final Paper ENG123 PDF

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Coursework for the class ENG-123 (English Comp 2) at SNHU....

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Nicole Lopez English Composition II Argumentative Essay October 2021

Effectiveness of Criminal Profiling

Criminal profiling is most likely one of the first things to come to mind when someone thinks of forensic psychology. It has become increasingly popular with the media portrayal in shows such as Law and Order, Criminal Minds, Mindhunter, and others. They depict this practice by showing how various areas of law enforcement are able to catch criminals by applying a specific profile that is developed using crime scene and victim analysis. However, when looking at real-world scenarios involving criminal profiling, the question of if it is accurate and widely used as it is shown on television comes up. While some individuals in law enforcements and forensic psychology may see this approach as controversial and unneeded, it can be argued otherwise. Offender profiling aids in reducing the investigation by signifying the type of person most likely to have committed a crime by narrowing in on certain behavioral and personality characteristics. Therefore, criminal profiling can be effective because it narrows the suspect field, the methodology has been perfected and mastered, and the results of profiling are admissible in court.

To begin, criminal profiling is efficient because it is an investigative tool that can be help narrow the suspect field and subsequently lead to apprehension. The particular reason for this is that offender profiling helps “identify the major personality, behavioral, and demographic characteristics of an offender based upon an analysis of the crime scene behaviors” (Fox & Farrington, 2018). Since the evolutionary start of criminal profiling in the beginning of the 1970s by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation, criminal profiling has made a substantial improvement. At the start, thirty-six offenders, such as Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy, were interviewed to gain insight and information was obtained on their crimes to better understand their psychology behind their actions. This led to a centralized database, known as ViCAP, of

serial offenders in the nation that is still used today. Profiling uses the location, time, crime scene, victimology, and other characteristics and information about the crime to narrow down the demographics of an offender in an effort to hopefully lead to apprehension. A meta-analysis study was done on 426 publications on offender profiling from 1976 to 2016 and the results indicated “that [criminal profiling] is statistically sophisticated and has yielded moderate to strong accuracy rates for linking crimes to a single offender” (Fox & Farrington, 2018).

Moving forward, the methodology of criminal profiling has been developed and perfected in the four decades since the practice was established. This includes several types of profiling that have been developed by studying various groups of offenders. There are four main types of nomothetic profiling: “criminal investigative analysis, diagnostic evaluation, investigative psychology, and geographic profiling” (Petherick & Turvey, 2012). Criminal investigative analysis is the mostly common form of profiling. It is a nomothetic method that actively demonstrates the evaluation of a crime scene as well as other factors such as victimology. Diagnostic evaluations can include mental assessments, psychological autopsies, and personality inventories. Investigative psychology uses prior research on offender groups and “covers all aspects of psychology that are relevant to criminal and civil investigations” (Petherick & Turvey, 2012). Geographic profiling assists with pinpointing a likely location that the offender could either live, work, or perhaps commit the crime again by examining the crime location in addition to other profiling methods. All of these together show that criminal profiling is a scientific methodology that has been mastered and continues to grow to provide assistance to law enforcement.

Lastly, another reason criminal profiling is effective is due to the fact that the methodology is admissible in court. When detaining a suspect, law enforcement and prosecutors tend to focus on how the trial will transpire and what evidence they have. If a suspect was apprehended based on a profile, then that said profile can be used in court as part of the trial. The influential cases in the United States establishing this “legal standard by which criminal profiling or any variant form of behavioral analysis…stem from State v Fortin and State v Fortin II (Kocsis & Palermo, 2016). These cases highlighted that the reliability of profiling should not be assumed as a practice of specialized knowledge, but rather a form of scientific evidence. Meaning the individual who gave the profile could potentially be an expert witness and speak of “the predictions concerning the probable characteristics [the] offender [had] possessed” that led to the capture (Kocsis & Palermo, 2016).

As stated previously, criminal profiling is still a relatively new practice and is controversial to some in the law enforcement and forensic psychology fields. The main arguments against criminal profiling include the possibility that it could lead law enforcement further away from the offender if the profile is incorrect. When it comes to a controversial topic, numbers and statistics are important, so the fact that “criminal profiles developed by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation possess a 75-80% accuracy ratio” speaks for itself on how helpful this practice can be (Kocsis & Palermo, 2016). Another study found that profiles that led to a capture of a homicide suspect had an AUC (standardized measure of diagnostic accuracy) score of .96, indicating that there is high prediction accuracy (Fox & Farrington, 2018).

To sum up everything that has been stated thus far, criminal profiling is an effective investigative tool because it narrows the suspect field, the results of profiling are admissible in court, and the methodology has been perfected and mastered. Profiling uses the location, time, crime scene, victimology, and other characteristics and information about the crime to narrow down the demographics of an offender in an effort to hopefully lead to apprehension. It has grown exponentially since the 1970s and is a scientific methodology that has been mastered and continues to grow to provide assistance to law enforcement. The reliability of offender profiling is also admissible in court and the individual can be used as an expert witness. Although it may be a controversial topic, the benefits of criminal profiling heavily outweigh the negatives and can be an extremely effective and operative tool for the exact purpose of law enforcement agencies.

References:

Petherick, W. A., & Turvey, B. E. (2012). Alternative Methods of Criminal Profiling. In B. E. Turvey (Ed.), Criminal Profiling (4 ed., pp. 67-99). Elsevier. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12385243-4.00003-4

Kocsis, R. N., & Palermo, G. B. (2016). Criminal profiling as expert witness evidence: The implications of the profiler validity research. International Journal of Law and Psychiatry, 49(Part A), 55-65. https://doi-org.ezproxy.snhu.edu/10/1016/j.ijlp.2016.05.011

Fox, B., & Farrington, D.P. (2018). What have we learned from offender profiling? A systematic review and meta-analysis of 40 years of research. Psychological Bulletin, 144(12), 1247-1274. https://doi-org.ezproxy.snhu.edu/10.1037/bul0000170...