Criminal Profiling Essay

Criminal profiling has been around as early as the 1880s, but was not refined until around the 1970s. Criminal profiling is an investigative tool. Profilers usually consist of highly educated men or women who have extensive background knowledge about how the human brain works. To be a successful profiler you must have many qualifications. “An experienced and well-trained profiler is intuitive, has a great deal of common sense, and is able to think and evaluate information in a concise and logical manner.” (O’Toole, 1999). Criminal profilers say that a crime scene is a story written by the offender. Once a crime is committed the profilers can start to create a profile of how the crime scene went by looking at police reports, autopsy photos,

The level of planning can determine whether the crime scene was well thought out or if it was in the spur of the moment. Profilers can tell by how much physical evidence is left at the crime scene. If there was not very much physical evidence left then that means that the offender knew what they were doing. The offender had thought about how to cover their tracks in not leaving physical evidence behind such as, foot prints, finger prints, hair follicles, and in some cases semen. The level of control consists of information on how much control the offender had over the victim. Profilers can usually see this in the markings on the victim that were left by bindings or objects used to tie the victim up. If the bindings seem to be extreme, it indicates that the offender could be a “sexual sadist” (O’Toole, 1999). The level of emotion is the information on the injuries and trauma of the victim. If the victim suffers a great deal of trauma or wounds from the offender, it can indicate that the offender was angry or brought a great deal of emotion or developed it at the scene. Profilers can also tell when the offender and victim had an argument by the trauma left of the