Relevance of Victimology to Criminal Profiling



Relevance of Victimology to Criminal Profiling

Following Garrido (2006), criminological profile can be defined as an estimate about the biographical characteristics and lifestyle responsible for a number of serious crimes and have not yet been identified. The purpose of this profile is to define the characteristics of the suspect to reduce the range of possible culprits and help the police focusing and restricting research opportunities by empowering them to focus on realistic targets. This point is very important because when dealing with violent crimes or serial, the alarm and the likelihood of recidivism of facts make it necessary to act quickly and promptly stop the murderer (Holmes & Holmes, 2008).

However, the profile has its limitations, is not an exact science, and is based on the analysis of psychological that the murderer left his crimes and other statistical data collected from cases and theoretical data provided by psychology and criminology. We are therefore talking about probabilities. In the words of Ressler (2005), people who make a profile look for patterns and try to find the characteristics of the suspected perpetrator, using the analytical and logical reasoning, "what" more "why" as to "who." In the late 70's, FBI agents Robert K. Ressler, John Douglas and Roy Hazelwood begin to analyze the behavior of murderers and serial rapists, a study conducted interviews with more than 36 sexual murderers (25 of which were serial), trying to find the keys to their modus operandi, their motivations and circumstances of their lives that could have facilitated their violent criminal careers. Criminal profiling is a technique derived from criminological research analysis done at the different behavioral patterns known offenders, to thereby define and create typologies (inductive criminal profiling) and thus aid in solving crimes in cases where unknown to the person responsible, ...