Law
crime scene analysis profiling process
According to Ebisike (2008), criminal profiling by the FBI is also called offender profiling wherein it involves criminal investigation techniques such as gathering pieces of evidence from the crime scene. Some of these may be in the form of testimonies of witnesses, the victims themselves, autopsy reports and significant information that may relate to the behavior of offender to create a profile. After making an initial assessment of the crime scene, the next thing for the FBI to do is to search and recognize any physical evidence, and to document the physical evidence. The four methods of documentation used by the Crime Scene Investigation (CSI) team: reporting and taking down of notes, taking pictures, taking videos and crime scene sketching and mapping (Dutelle, 2013, p. 114). The next step is to collect the physical evidence. The CSI should determine the forensic specialists that will be needed to gather the evidence such as the latent print analyst, the bloodstain or blood-spatter analyst and the forensic anthropologist (Hart, 2009). The best way to collect evidence is by using clean or single-use tools or equipment and to dispose them after use such as in the case of gloves, forceps, scalpels and other tools to collect biological evidence. It is a requirement that CSI should use a single-use collection material by using swabs, swatches and other items that come in direct contact with evidence to be collected (Hart, 2004, p. 38).
It is vital that the investigation team to make sure that every piece of evidence is individually packaged to avoid cross-contamination. The final step is to transport and submit the evidence for secure storage. The investigation team must be able to maintain the integrity of all evidence collected to avoid compromising evidence yet to be processed and to ensure that specialized equipment are used to transport unusual items of evidence (Hart, 2004, p. 44).
The analysis will result to the offender’s probability of committing the crime. The profiling process can be considered as a balancing technique since the FPI has to make a connection to the physical traces of evidence discovered in the crime scene and the offender’s behavior. There are two operating words associated in criminal profiling namely, modus operandi which literally means method of operation and behavior. This is based on the premise that the offender or the criminal will commit a particular crime in a similar or like pattern (Ebisike, 2008). The modus operandi will give the FBI investigation team some helpful clues about the perpetrator and the characteristics that were obtained during the crime scene to analyze the motive of the offender in committing the crime.
There are three purposes in conducting criminal profiling: 1.) For make a social and psychological assessments of the offenders; 2.) To consider psychological belongings that will be found in the possession of the supposed criminal in his home such as pictures, books, videos, magazines and other material evidence that may be related to the crime; 3.) To account techniques and interrogation strategies that will be conducted by the FBI investigators to extract information from the suspects.
There are two distinct forms of criminal profiling that uses different reasoning processes: inductive profiling and deductive profiling (Kocsis, 2007). Inductive criminal profiling is the method which makes use of inductive reasoning through broad generalizations or statistical reasoning, where there is a probability that the premises for consideration are true and the subsequent conclusion is incorrect (Kocsis, 2007). Deductive criminal profiling shall involve deductive reasoning where using arguments are assumed to be true and there is greater possibility that the end conclusion that will be accurate.
References
Dutelle, A. (2013). An Introduction to Crime Scene Investigation, 2nd ed. Sudbury, MA: Jones
and Bartlett.
Ebisike, N. (2008). Offender Profiling in the Courtroom. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood
Publishing.
Hart, S. (2004). Crime Scene Investigation: A Reference for Law Enforcement Training. U.S.
Holmes, R.N. and Holmes, S.T. (2002). Profiling Violent Crimes. California: SAGE.
Kocsis, R.N.(2007). Criminal Profiling. New Jersey: Humana Press.
