Who Are Criminal Profilers? Rebecca Wiltshire Colby-Sawyer College Criminal profilers mix both the world of psychology with criminal justice. The field itself is fairly new and often time’s profilers don't always agree on methodology or even terminology. The term "profiling" is popular among the public because of media interoperations such as “The Silence of the Lambs” and “Criminal Minds”. However the FBI calls its form of profiling “criminal investigative analysis”; another profiler, a prominent forensic psychologist, calls his work “investigative psychology”; and another calls his “crime action profiling” only further proving the lack of agreement in terminology (8).
A psychopath is classified as someone who lacks empathy and a conscience. They also tend to have the characteristics of fearlessness, ruthlessness, mental charm, persuasiveness, high intelligence level, and lack of remorse or shame. Amy Crawford even stated that, “Any situation where you’ve a got a power structure, a hierarchy, the ability to manipulate or wield control over people, you get psychopaths doing very well.” Psychopaths will do anything in their will to achieve their goals while disregarding the emotions of others. These types of psychopaths in society become successful policemen, surgeons, and lawyers. They are successful in their professions because or their fearless qualities and are able to work under pressure without being stressed or emotionally affected.
When most people think of psychopaths, they think—with a shudder—of serial killers like Ted Bundy, who seem to show no remorse or even understanding that what they do is morally wrong. Psychopathy —also called sociopathy—is indeed defined by lack of empathy, callousness and complete disregard for anything or anyone else other than one's selfish needs. But although all psychopaths meet the criteria for what the diagnostic manual calls "antisocial personality disorder"—of which psychopathy is the most extreme case—not all of them are ruthless murderers. "People don't realize that there are hundreds of sociopaths walking around [who] aren't criminals," says child psychiatrist Bruce Perry, M.D., Ph.D. "They end up manipulating people to get
I have concluded that substance abuse is a huge contributor to crimes being committed. The lack or decrease in moral intuition and character can cause a person to make bad decisions. This would cause people not to understand the benefits of to abiding to common social values. A person demographics can also play a role in determining whether or not an individual will turn to a life of crime. Government officials, politicians, and courts employees have concluded that individuals commit crimes for private alternatives and they should be punished and held responsible for their actions and conduct.
One theory of these murders is that they are connected to an individual or organized group of killers, now known as the Smiley Face murders because of graffiti depicting a smiley face near locations in which detectives believe the body was dumped. One law enforcement professional noted that the presence of a smiley face in such a macabre setting was indicative of serial killer psychology, “They’re telling you here that they’re into evil, they are very happy as most serial killers are. They’re content with their work and what they’re doing and the fact that they’re thwarting the police” (Fox News, 2008). What is most interesting about this case is that it is unclear as to whether the murders are being done by a single individual, a gang of like minded individuals, or one individual guiding a gang or group as part of an initiation approach. Based on this, it appears that in addition to a profile of the purported killer, we may need to include criminal investigation analysis, which includes strategies and techniques based on other serial murderers.
III. Personal Reflection: Determining the cause, and who may be a potential serial killer is a very impossible task. Its true that many serial killers have had mental problems but others are very intelligent
From this type of profiling an offender can be categorized as organized nonsocial offenders and disorganized asocial offenders. The killing from theses two types of offenders would produce two different crime scenes, one of complete chaos and plenty of evidence all over and another with little evidence and more controlled. A major benefit from using this type of profiling is that it let investigators know what kind of offender they will be dealing with so they know how to proceed with the case and interrogate them. A limitation from this type of profiling can be that too much attention is paid to the physical evidence and not on the nonphysical (Holmes & Holmes,
Many people here today are convinced that the Nexus-6 Replicant, Roy Batty, is an emotionally awkward Frankensteinian creature guilty of murder, or if you will, patricide. So far the prosecution has presented circumstantial evidence of which they can only accuse. The accusations of murder are, only that, accusations. Yes, Dr Eldon Tyrell did come to his premature death at the hands of Roy Batty, but this cannot be classified as murder. Before I delve into why Roy Batty is not guilty of such an allegation, I will need to inform you of a theory developed by Masahiro Mori, called the “Uncanny Valley”.
Key Concepts and Implications of Neurocriminology The concepts Dr. Raine discussed in this presentation were very thought provoking and dealt with a concept that I have long been interested in. Many of us search for an answer regarding “where does evil come from?” When a violent crime occurs that has an effect on society we often hear phrases such as, “You know there had to be something wrong with him. No person in their right mind could have done something like that.” In our search for answers, it is very typical to assume there is a defect of the mind. When Dr. Raine discussed what I felt was a key concept, if not the central theme of his presentation, “Violent offenders may know right from wrong cognitively, but may not have the feeling of right and wrong” (Raine, 2010) I think he hit on an idea that we can all buy into. At least in part, many can agree with the lack of a conscious or soul.
Crime is easy to describe as any behavior that is generally unacceptable and causes injury to an individual or a group of individuals. Theft, robbery, burglary, corruption, embezzlement, physical and mental violence, rape and killing are easier to categorize as crimes. But when it comes to terrorism, it becomes hard to have a world wide acceptable definition. This difficulty to identify an act as a terrorist act has been one of the key reasons why the world is grappling with a three headed monster called in the present day, “terrorism”. Though everyone accepts that terrorism is a kind of crime, a heinous one at that, the very fact that a terrorist for one is a martyr for others has made the situation very puzzling.