Criminal Profiling and the Mass Media

Criminal Profiling and the Mass Media

Introduction

Criminal profiling based on behavior analysis is a method for investigators to determine the profile psychologically a criminal. A "profiler "is a person to carry out a draft of the type of psychological portrait of a person. The term "profiling" does not refer to reality, however professional and / or psychological analysis and / or police, but was fabricated and introduced by television. Although these terms tend rather to the coup spread, we speak mostly in the environment concerned with "behavior analyst" psycho (dialogue) or even just a forensic policeman for example in France or a member of the FBI in the United States. The so-called "profilers" are mainly trained in the Anglo-Saxon countries where they hold the title of psychologist and a mastery of criminal law (often embellished with academic expertise in victim logy and / or criminology). It is most often required to be a member of the police or army to be required in addition to its qualities in criminology (Jackson, 2010).

Criminal profiling is a method by which investigators specialize in psychology to determine the profile psychological an individual a posteriori (that is to say, after the events occurred). It may be a criminal or a victim (fugue, rugged, etc.). In criminology modern, it is generally considered that it is the third stage of police investigations: the first being the analysis of indices, path opened by Scotland Yard in the nineteenth century , and second the study of crime in itself same. The third stage, often optional of analyzing the psyche of the person sought. A distinction is often the criminal profiling of crime analysis: the first is to determine a psychological profile based on the elements identified in the crimes, and is usually practiced by psychologists or psychiatrists, who are thus here function “profilers.” The crime analysis, it is a use of computers to assist investigators (approximation of data files judicial, mapping, etc.).

Criminal profiling, as used currently in the police, was born in the United States, where it was consecrated in the year 1950: the psychiatrist James A. Brussel was asked by police to help solve a series of attacks in the bomb that hit theaters including the New York between 1940 and 1956. This is the accuracy of the profile that establishes that allowed to stop the criminal.

Popular belief conveys the idea that investigators tend to use profiler to solve unsolved crimes than conventional methods of investigation are not sufficient to enlighten. This vision conveyed by the very prolific film culture of the past 20 years has led the public to think that the profiler is exclusively devoted to serial murder. A second belief tends toward the speculative idea that profilers can arrest killers simply by studying the apartment of a victim or his lifestyle. This theory (very relayed by television) has never been a practice intervention used (Turvey, 2008).

Representation in the Media

The job of profiling has been the subject of several films and ...