Criminal Profiling And Forensic Psychology

According to Wikipedia, criminal psychology is referred to as “the study of the wills, thoughts, intentions and reactions of criminals, all that partakes in criminal behaviour.”(Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_psychology ) Albeit the fact that the application of psychology in the justice system is commonly known as forensic psychology and both branches of psychological studies are closely similar, both are very different fields when it comes to its specializations: in the field of criminal psychology, the work of criminal psychologist is done on a theoretical basis (Chron, http://work.chron.com/difference-between-criminal-psychology-forensic-psychology-15595.html ), before a perpetrator has even been identified while in forensic …show more content…
Profiling simply defines the use of information from the crime scene to describe the offender’s behaviour while committing the act of crime. (Criminal Psychology: A Beginner’s Guide, p. 6 to 7) Criminal profiling or offender profiling is one of the used techniques in identifying a criminal in several cases besides scouring for physical evidences like blood, murder weapons, and many more. It has already been used in various scenarios when it comes to solving cases pertaining to rape, murder, kidnapping, etc. It is commonly used in narrowing the number of suspects in an investigation, and to also evaluate suspects using psychological means which is profiling. However, it does not identify the main culprit, but on the bright side, it’ll most likely be able to identify the personality and behavioural characteristics the perpetrator possesses. In some cases, the motive for crime is absent due to the scarce amount of evidences, etc. However, based on the first chapter from the book Profiling Violent Crimes by Ronald M. Holmes and Stephen T. Holmes, every crime possesses a certain kind of characteristic, and the perpetrator will most likely do their work in a similar or same manner (p. 3). Profiling is indeed impressive: it is usually successful when it comes to prediction of criminal deeds, especially if he or she is in what people commonly refer to as a “spree”. (Explore Forensics, …show more content…
An offender profiler might be asked to construct a profile of an unknown offender giving details of his or her likely characteristics as inferred from the offender’s behaviour at the crime scene.” (R. Bull, C. Cooke, R. Hatcher, J. Woodhams, C. Bilby and T. Grant, p.