CR2009 PSYCHOLOGY AND CRIME Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 4000 words

CR2009 PSYCHOLOGY AND CRIME - Essay Example Criminal profiling is used by law enforcement officials like the police among other investigative agencies around the globe, to predict the nature of the criminals that they are encountering. This process has continued to be used, irrespective of the fact that there is a lack of solid empirical/ scientific evidence which is valid, reliable and useful to show that the method really works and provides factual information (Snook et al., 2007). The information gap between the usage of the process and the lack of supportive evidence leads any sensible person to one main question. This question is: â€Å"why do many people, among them specialists in criminology and law enforcement believes that criminal profiling works, irrespective of the fact that there is a lack of solid evidence to show that the process is productive. Towards addressing this information gap, this report will assess the extent, to which offender profiling informs policing and investigations, through examining the illus ion of offender profiling. The criminal profiling illusion will be explored from the point of view of the nature of the criminal profiling information delivered to people, and the varied ways in which they process the information supplied. The assembly of the profile of an unknown criminal ordinarily, takes place in three phases (Hicks and Sales, 2006). The first phase in the process is the collection of crime scene evidence (data) by police or other law enforcement officials; the information collected can be in different forms, including detective accounts, photographs and autopsy reports. The data collected is then sent to a criminal profiler, who uses it to make predictions about the behavioural, personality and the demographic characteristics of the criminal involved in the given crime. The predictions about the nature of the criminal are then sent back to the officers investigating the crime. Despite the fact