Psychological Profiling
Psychological Profiling deals with the examination or investigation of offenders’ behavior, motives and background as a way of establishing links between the named variables and the offenders’ actions. Psychological profiling entails the foregoing as means to lay a foundation of further investigation. According to Serge Schmemann, (2002, p. 14) one of the leverage points for the basis of Psychological profiling is that empirical research has shown that criminals who often kill or rape are significantly affected by heightened public fear for their behavior and actions to get media coverage and attention. This has led to the arrests of many criminals in several cases. Psychological Profiling deals with the examination or investigation of an offender’s behavior; motives and background as a way of establishing links between those variables and the offender’s behavior. Psychological profiling entails the foregoing as means to lay a foundation for further investigation. One of the leverage points for the basis of Psychological profiling is that empirical research has shown that criminals who often kill or rape are significantly affected by heightened public fear for their behavior and actions to get media coverage and attention. This has led to the arrests of many criminals in several many cases. Debates are ensuing over the feasibility and the effectiveness of psychological profiling.
Psychological Profiling has come in handy especially in the contemporary society plagued with the problems such as terrorism. Serge Schmemann (2002, p. 12) notes that psychological profiling has come in handy as it is not possible to subject everyone to high level scrutiny. Profiling will help the security forces and structures to zero in on the most likely suspects in any scenario. In many aviation centers especially in Europe where terrorism is prevalent passengers are asked to arrive in way on time, at least about three hours before take off so that they can be subjected to heavy scrutiny. The process of examining and categorizing as well as profiling the passengers effectively enables security forces to establish possible criminals and isolate these until their innocence can be ascertained.
Psychological profiling helps security enforces to ask target individuals set of questions which will help them profile the individual as either low risk or high risk individuals. If individuals are classified to be high risk they are subjected to more intensive scrutiny. Boaz Ganor (1995, p, 56) states that many grave crime plots especially in the domain of terrorism have been busted way before they occur because of the implementation of psychological profiling measures especially at aviation centers. Psychological profiling has helped governments to compile watch lists and have criminals under spotlight which becomes easy to detect the movements and criminal intent of the watch listed individuals.
There are various forms of psychological profiling. Inductive profiling involves investigators assembling profiles using inductive measures. Inductive profiling measures entail assuming that when a criminal commits a crime, he or she will have a similar background and motive in relation to other who would have committed a similar crime or crime related to that. On the other end; deductive profiling entails a process in which generalizations about issues and people are avoided. H
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