criminal behavior analysis

  • Profiling  

  • techniques that identify behavioral, cognitive, emotional, and demographic characteristics of known and unknown individuals based on crime scenes, databases, docs, interviews, and research

      

  • Profile based off medical examiners, technicians, and investigators 

  • Who the victim is 

  • Who would seek out this victim 

  • Location (Secondary comfort zone) 

  • Modus operandi and ritual 

  • Main approaches of profiling                         

  • Geographical 

  • Where offenders work/spend most of their time 

  • Patterns in locations/timing 

  • Investigative psychology 

  • Theories and techniques used to predict offender behavior characteristics  

  • Intimacy theory 

  • Clinical 

  • Looking at the physical and mental sufferings of the offender 

  • Typological 

  • Analyzing the characteristics of the crime scene to categorize offenders into groups of typical characteristics 

  • Organized and disorganized  

 

  • In depth analysis of a crime scene 

  • Looking for common patterns with previous incidents  

 

  • Criminal profiling techniques 

  • Data assimilation 

  • Interviews, crime scene photos, police reports, pathology reports 

  • Crime scene classification 

  • Organized vs disorganized 

  • Crime scene reconstruction 

  • Behavior and sequence of events 

  • Profile generation (can include a sketch) 

  • Physical characteristics, demographics, and behavior 

 

  • Bottom-up approach                                           

  • Puts all info together and builds up a logical description 

  • Looks for ways the crime could reflect the offender routine/personality 

  • The process of criminal profiling marries the psychological and rational instincts with all the details of the crime scene 

  • It's more of an art than a science 

  • 5 stages of criminal profiling process           

  • Profiling inputs 

  • All possible info 

  • (victims background, criminal history, habits, acquaintances, social status, employment) 

  • Decision processing 

  • Classify the crime: organized or disorganized 

  • (type, style, motive, location, choice of victim) 

  • Crime assessment  

  • Reconstruction  

  • (before, during, and after, determine behaviors) 

  • Offender profile 

  • Hypostatize the type of offender 

  • (age, gender, race, social status, intelligence, descriptors) 

  • Investigative use  

  • Helps narrow down the search for an offender  

  • Assists in planning interviews/interrogations  

 

  • Criminal profiling includes gathering basic details that include: 

  • Manner, type, location of the crime 

  • Choices of victims 

  • Condition of the crime scene 

  • Communications from the suspects 

 

  • FBI behavioral science unit created in 1974 

  • Uses a combination of law enforcement and forensic psychology 

  • Goal to develop a description of an offender by analyzing evidence from the crime scene with statements from victims/witnesses 

 

  • Criminal profiling 

  • Homicides and sexual assaults are the kinds of crimes that are more likely to attract profilers 

  • Behavioral analysis is the preferred term in law enforcement 

 

  • Criminal profiling is one activity under behavioral analysis 

  • Develop profiles of unknown offender 

  • Analyze crime scenes 

  • Reconstruct crime scenes 

  • Conduct personality tests 

  • Provide advice on investigations 

  • Analyze statements 

  • Analyze suspicious deaths 

  • Help develop interview/interrogation strategies 

  • 5 areas of behavior profiling 

  • Crime scene profiling (crime scene analysis) 

  • Profiling unknown offenders based off info gathered at the scene: 

  • Cognitive tendencies 

  • Behavior patterns 

  • Motivations 

  • Emotional disposition  

  • Demographic variables  

  • Geographical profiling (geo-profilers) 

  • Identifying the area of probable residence/area they may strike again based on locations of previous crime sites 

  • Psychological profiling 

  • Used to identify/predict dangerous people 

  • Most times they’re identity is already known 

  • Threat assessment – credibility/seriousness of threat  

  • Rick assessment – evaluated people who violated social norms/displayed strange behavior 

  • Suspect based profiling 

  • Identifying psychological/behavior of people who commit particular types of crimes 

  • Equivocal death analysis (postmortem psychological analysis) 

  • Reconstructing the emotional life/behavioral patterns/cognitive features of a deceased person