CRIMINAL PROFILING

Criminal Profiling

Criminal profiling is a branch of forensics that literally offers a sneak-peek into an accused’s mind. Also known as offender profiling or psychological profiling, it is a popular tool used to identify possible suspects by analyzing patterns. This deductive and inductive reasoning also helps law enforcement agencies predict future offenses and victims. Criminal profiling is commonly applied to predictive profiling, suspect identification by establishing common patterns, and sexual assault offender profiling.

Criminal profilers psychologically evaluate the belongings retrieved from an offender to draw a social and psychological picture of the offender. This also helps provide law enforcement agencies with strategies and suggestions for interviewing the suspect. In simple terms, offender profiling is basically making inferences about the emotional, psychological, physical, habitual and even vocational characteristics of a suspect.

HOW TO PREVENT CRIME ? AND CRIMINALS IN A SOCIETY.

Is it possible for the government to prevent crime, just by framing new criminal laws or by just punishing all the criminals with more rigorous punishments?

The answer would be NO because if you have to get rid of something ,then u must have to understand every aspect of that particular thing. So to prevent crime and criminals from the society, we have to understand the cause of it ..Why crime happens?

How does a criminal mind works? and
What is the cause behind the crime?

Answer to all these questions will be answered in either Criminology or in Criminal Psychology. So, to prevent crime and criminals from the society , one should understand and become a expertise in criminology and criminal psychology.

According to psychology, criminals can be characterised under two categories .i.e. Psychopaths and Sociopaths. Psychopaths are the ones, who are born with high criminal tendencies .Sociopaths are the ones , who are not born with high criminal tendencies but due to external factors like emotional imbalance , economic issues , family issues due to they choose a path which ultimately leads them to the path of crime. As we know nobody wants to become a criminal in his/her life. But unknowingly they indulge in an act which leads them to commit crime and become a criminal.

Now we can get an idea ,that the Criminal Psychology is the need of an hour to prevent crime and criminals from the society.

What is crime?

According to Law, crime is an act committed or omitted in violation of public laws. It is also considered as an act forbidden by law. It mainly constitutes 2 components .i.e. Actus Reus and Mens Rea .

According to Psychology ,there are mostly three acceptable theories which define crime.

They are:

i. Consensus view

ii. Conflict view and

iii. Interactionist view.

Consensus view-

According to this view ,change is constant in its nature so, how can a crime stay constant with the change in society. In short, crime changes with the change in society. For example – Child marriage is considered as a crime in present society but earlier in the medieval era it wasn’t considered as a crime.

Conflict view

This view is exactly opposite to the consensus view. Here , society is considered as the collection of diverse groups due to their differences, conflicts rises between them and these conflicts promotes crime.

Interactionist view

This is the view which falls in between the consensus and conflict view. According to this view ,there is no moral right or moral wrong , rather the change in moral standard affects the legal standards.

Crime can be considered as an act which violates the rights of the people and affects the society at large by motivating or influencing psychopaths as well as sociopaths and creates terror and distrust environment among the society.

What is criminal psychology?

There are so many different aspects taken to understand the nature , cause and distribution of crime. One of these aspect is Criminal Psychology .

Criminal psychology is considered as one of the important branches of criminology. So many criminologists and psychologists have tried to define it but till date there is no specific or universally accepted definition of criminal psychology.

Criminal Profiling

Criminal profiling is used as an investigative aid in judging any criminal through the systematic observational process by analysing the crime scene, the victim, the forensic evidence and the known facts of the crime. Worldwide it is being increasingly used to assess the criminality and causation of crime.

Causation of crime plays a very important role to gauge any criminal. Among all the theories of crime, the psychodynamic approach plays a significant role in analysing any criminal. This approach was first applied in ‘Jack the Ripper’ case in 1888 to understand the nature of crime and criminal. Since then it has found acceptability in many countries. However, it is not prevalent in India.

Unawareness about the categories of mental illness leads to confusion about its classification. Criminal profiling helps to understand the exact category of mental illness. This study aims to explore the relevance of criminal profiling in case of mentally ill criminals particularly with respect to Psychopaths by reviewing the 10 case studies of psychopaths.

On the basis of comparative study and analysis of modes operandi of these cases, an attempt has been made to explain the need of criminal profiling in the cases related to psychopaths, especially in India. By identifying the most common psychological and crime-related factors, the study attempts to use criminal profiling process to classify the types of mental illness particularly psychopaths.

Psychopathy is one of the most dangerous mental diseases. Unfortunately, there is little awareness about it in India. Psychopaths are generally associated with sexual criminals rather than mental criminals. Many cases reported in India give a clear indication of psychopathy but those were misinterpreted by the legal system, for instance, Nithari Case, Cyanide Mohan Case, Devendra Sharma case, Auto Shankar Case and so on. Psychopaths always commit brutal crime because they enjoy pain. Whenever any heinous crime is committed mostly the criminal is considered to be a monster. Although it should be first examined whether the criminal is mentally ill and subsequently the type of mental illness from which the person is suffering. Criminal profiling uses this technique in order to accurately identify the disease. Psychopaths are very clever and generally successful in deceiving the police and other investigative agencies. Detail study and investigation is needed to examine psychopaths. Sexual crime and crime committed by the mentally ill are generally confused because of a similar pattern. Criminal profiling is a tool which is helpful in identifying the pattern of a criminal and accordingly the nature of the disease of the criminal.

In UK and USA criminal profiling is used for identification of mentally ill criminals particularly psychopaths. Special Laws pertaining to psychopathy have also been enacted. There is an urgent need in India also to give prominence to the use of criminal profiling in the investigation of a case related to mentally ill criminals particularly psychopaths.

But some of the definitions which we can consider are:

According to G.H. Gudjonsson and L.R.C Haward in U.K. defined criminal psychology as ,"The branch of applied psychology which is concerned with the collection, examination and presentation of evidence for judicial purposes".

According to Legal Dictionary ," Criminal Psychology is considered as the study of will, intention , thoughts , feelings and reactions of criminals and those who engage in criminal behaviour".

History:

As we know Criminal Psychology is the new specialization field which came in early 19th century. So their is no such big historic events occured in the history of criminal psychology. But we can trace the roots of criminal psychology which were found in America and some parts from Britain, Europe and Russia.

While in india, it can be traced back to the year 1916 when first department of experimental psychology was established in Calcutta university. After which Lok Nayak Jayaprakash Narayan national institute of criminology and forensic science came up in Delhi in 1972.

Then in 2001 it achieved a global recognition as a specialized field by A.P.A.

Who is a criminal psychologist?

A criminal psychologist deals with the psychological aspects of legal process such as understanding psychological problem associated with criminal behaviour treatment of criminals applying theory to criminal investigations.

Some of the veteran psychologists or criminologists are:

Alfred Binet

He was the first French psychologist , who performed the series of experiments to understand intelligence.

William Stern

He was the first professor who discovered the emotional arousal in the eye witness testimony.

Hugo Munsterberg

He is the father of forensic psychology .He released his first book on the witness stand.

Role of criminal psychologist:

Criminal psychologist will cover a range of roles such as

1. Research evidence to support practice

2. Implementing treatment programs

3. Advising parol boards

4. Modifying offenders behaviour

5. Responding to the changing needs of prisoners and staff.

6. Appear in court as an expert witness.

7. Mental Health Tribunals.

8. Statistical analysis used for prisoner profiling.

Scope of Criminal Psychology:

We can figure out the scope of criminal psychology through four basic roles. These roles are:

1. Clinical role: In this role , experts uses assessment of a person who had committed a crime or who has been declared as an accused by the courts .these assessments can be used to determine if a person is competent to stand in a trial.

2. Experimental role : In this role, experts conducts researches in order to help judges and jury to decide a case by questioning the eyes witness credibility and giving their observations to them.

3. Actuarial role : In this role , expert uses statistics such as probability of an event and they also uses to ask livelihood of an individual reoffending .

4. Advisory role : In this role criminal psychologist advices police in regards to an investigation . It also helps the judges to understand the criminal behaviour or psychology of the accused and helps them in establishing