Nomothetic profiles are used to develop the features of an offender by examining a group of offenders, and even though they do not give an actual feature, they give a possibility of offenders. This study focuses on examining the characteristic of a distinguished group and come up with theories about specific cases. They are also hypothetical in that, they are not far from the actual truth about a group because they use extensive measures to get knowledge about criminal and their distinguished groups (Petherick & Turvey, 2008).
The principle objective of nomothetic profiles is to collect as much information as possible about a group, and distinguish their features as offender group. This means that it is not possible to give a distinction of an individual criminal because nomothetic profile is all about a group of offenders. In other words, nomothetic profiles are a representative of possibility, but the problem comes in when they are used to give an inference, or rather possibilities of an individual offender (Petherick & Turvey, 2008).
In simple terms, nomothetic profiles are used to make conclusions about offenders from the extensive data collected about previous offenders. They use combined data of various individuals to come up with a conclusive statement that vividly predicts who offenders are. Therefore, it can be concluded that nomothetic profiles have proven to be an excellent technique to identify patterns in mass murder incidents. This is because, it is possible to examine features of mass murder offenders, and then use comparison method to distinguish features that appear to be similar with each other. Again, by using all the information and the data collected, one can accurately suppose about the likelihood of a future offender and probably predict their next move (Petherick & Turvey, 2008).
References
Petherick, W., & Turvey, B. E. (2008). Nomothetic methods of criminal profiling. Criminal profiling: An introduction to behavioral evidence analysis, 75-111.
