Crime Scene Analysis Profiling Process Paper

The popular television show, CSI: Crime Scene Investigations has been on the air for 12 years, and it has brought forth the behind-the-scenes actions of criminal investigations, even if its portrayals are not always scientifically accurate. This has caused an interest in the forensic sciences that has led most people to a skewed view of how a criminal investigation actually works. The reality of a criminal investigation is that it is generally more tedious and difficult than the theory of criminal investigation would have you believe. By examining the forensic and investigative procedures of the case of Pamela Foddrill, it is apparent that the theory of criminal investigation was not representative of the procedures concerning examination

What is crime scene investigation? Crime scene investigation is the use of physical evidence at the scene of the crime and the use of of the deductive and inductive reasoning to gain knowledge of the events and of the surrounding crime. Crime scene investigating is a big combination of Science, logic and law.

The process of using behavioral evidence left at a crime scene to make inferences about the offender, including inferences about personality characteristics and psychopathology is called criminal profiling. Around the country, several agencies rely on the minds of criminal psychologists to lead them in the right direction to finding the correct offender. Criminal profiling provides investigators with knowledge of the appearance and behavior of a potential criminal.

Profiling is a tool used that emerges forensics, psychology, and criminology to understand criminals such as rapist and serial killers. This technique has been used for centuries to unveil motives, disorders, and history. Law enforcements work with the information they are given to create profiles of the criminals based on their characteristics and evidence. Law enforcement have tried to track patterns and predict the next criminal act, but with the lack of training that has been done for such rare and horrendous crimes. After many serial killers have taunted the police’s lack of intelligence when it comes to catching them from their heinous crimes, other methods where adopted or discovered to help reduce the number of crimes.

CSI, The First Forty-eight, Date Line, Law and Order and Criminal Justice are just a few examples of shows on the T.V. networks today that roll out a visual of the term victimology. According to Box 1.1 in the class text, Crime Victims, An Introduction to Victimology, by Andrew Aarmen, March 2012, victimology is the work done by law enforcement teams as they gather as much detailed information pertaining to a victim’s life while they were alive as they possibly can in order to help them identify the perpetrator of the crime, take them to court, and hopefully obtain a guilty verdict and appropriate sentencing.

“Crime analysis has been defined as “a set of systematic, analytical process providing timely and pertinent information to assist operational and administrative personnel” (Peak, 2015, pp. 200). Also, there is “one tool that could be used for analyzing problems is the “problem-analysis triangle,” in which helps police officers visualize the problem and understand the relationship between the three elements of the triangle” (Peak, 2015, pp. 200). The three elements would be: “an offender: someone who is motivated to commit harmful behavior, a victim: a desirable and vulnerable target, and a location: although the victim and offender are not always in the same place at the same time; locations is discussed later” (Peak, 2015, pp. 200). Basically, this is the stage where law enforcement officials conclude to factor or issues that could be producing the crimes to take

Crimes scenes contains more information than what meets the eye. This information is gathered based off of evidence left behind by a criminal offender. The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) Behavioral Science Unit (BSU) has be around since the 1970’s. BSU experts develop criminal profiles based on the thorough examination of evidence and information gathered in reference to a specific crime. The FBI’s Crime Scene Analysis process involves six steps. These steps are Profiling Inputs, Decision Process Models, Crime Assessment, The Criminal Profile, The Investigation, and The Apprehension. These six steps play a vital role in the process of creating a criminal profile.

Secondly, the physical aspects of the victim are important as well; is the victim is heavy, and was dragged for a long distance, it can be surmised that the criminal is strong and may have a muscular appearance. (Patterson) Victimology is first and foremost an investigative tool, providing context, connections, and investigative direction. (Turvey) Some people may ask, “Why profile the victim?” but profiling the victim is a very important element that helps profilers better understand the criminal. Profilers look at the general lifestyle and activities of the victim in order to know who had access to them and when. Knowing the victim and properly profiling them may establish a relational link between the victim and criminal. When profiling a victim it is important to look at them as a real person as well as a victim. Some investigators and detectives have a tendency to deify or vilify the victim in a case. Deification involves idealizing victims. For example,

The book gives a general overview of the field of forensic science. The sections of the book include “The Scene of the Crime; Working the Scene--The Evidence; Working the Scene of the Body Human;

The objective of the research is to examine the concept of offender profiling. This concept relates to the behavioral, as well as investigative approach or mechanism, which focuses on enabling the investigators to predict and profile the characteristics of unknown criminal offenders or subjects accurately and efficiently. Cole and Brown (2014) focuses on the illustration of the important and significance of a Behavioral Investigative Adviser (BIA) towards assisting the Senior Investigating Officer (SIO) in the course of investigating difficult-to-detect murders. This is an illustration of the concept of profiling, which seeks to facilitate effective and efficient profiling of the murder offenders for accurate prediction of their behaviors. It is possible for the readers of the research article to gain substantive insights and knowledge on the issue of profiling from this research article, thus relevant to the selected topic.

Forensic victimology is the idiographic and nomothetic study of violent crime victims for the purposes of addressing investigation and forensic issues. It is a subdivision of interactionist victimology which is defined by having suffered harm or loss due to a breach of the law. Forensic victimology has purpose goal which is to empower victims, returning victims to the state they were in prior to suffering harm or loss, and making them feel more comfortable again and serving justices to the person who s harm to the victim (Turvey, 2014, pp. 1 and 25). There few criminologists that came up with their own different types of victims. They are Hans Von Hentig, Benjamin Mendelsohn, Stephen Schafer, Ph.D., Marvin E. Wolfgang,

。 In the last decade the use of criminal profiling as a means to help detect and capture criminals has become more common place during many a criminal investigation. Indeed criminal profiling has also been recognized as one of the most useful techniques in offender profiling that is a technique used to build strategies for interrogating and prosecuting the criminal. This assignment will discuss about how the criminal profiling benefit on the investigation and to refute the weak point of this method. What is offender profiling?

Criminal Profiling is a method of identifying the perpetrator of a crime based on an analysis of the nature of the offense and the manner in which it was committed. It most notably can be traced back to work done in the later part of the last century, and possibly even earlier in a variety of forms. There has been a definite growth since this early work, with many individuals doing a great deal of both research and practical work in criminal profiling. The investigative technique has recently risen in popularity both in practical use and media portrayals.

In order for offender profiling to be considered useful, it must gather detailed information about the offender, victim and crime scene which can then be used effectively by police detectives to eliminate any suspects who do not match with the profiler 's offender specification and aid authorities in

Everyone, especially jurors, have come to expect that in violent crime cases there will be forensic science evidence presented by the prosecution. As a result, many in the legal field have indicated the presence of the so-called “CSI Effect,” which leads jurors to expect that there will be scientific proof positively linking a defendant to a crime (Heinrick,