The Five Types Of Psychological Profiling

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Psychological profiling has had a long history within the criminal justice field including the FBI. Many believe that this type of profiling has no usefulness in solving crimes, however the more that is learned about how a criminal thinks the better equipped to solve crimes sooner and prevent new crimes. Psychological profiling can be used to limit the amount of suspects for a given crime. While a psychological profile will help to solve a crime, having a solid crime scene examination is a must for building a starting place for the profile to form.
Introduction
The purpose of psychological profiling is to help identify and predict behavior. “The term profiling is used to describe the gathering of various kinds of information about a person or persons” (Bartol and Bartol, 2014). Psychological profiling uses two approaches when assisting in solving crimes, threat assessment and risk assessment. The use of psychological profiling does not replace investigation and it is not an exact science but it is a tool that can be used to help in eliminating the suspect pool and prevent further crimes by the suspect(s).
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Profiling can be divided into five categories, including psychological profiling, suspect-based profiling, geographic profiling, crime scene profiling, and equivocal death analysis (Bartol and Bartol, 2014). Each of these categories can give insight to the investigators in charge of the

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