The criminal psychological profile

  • Jul 26, 2021
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The criminal psychological profile

Since the world is world there have been people who have done evil. Robberies, murders, rapes,... Whatever the crime, the causes and motivations behind these acts are many. So how do you catch a criminal when you have no information about who he is or what motives can be hidden?

In recent decades, criminology and psychology applied to criminal investigation has made giant strides to extract information, structure it and reach conclusions that allow us to reveal the identity of the criminals. The criminal's psychological profile it is the main tool we have. Do you want to know what it is? In the following Psychology-Online article we will explain it to you extensively.

You may also like: The murderer of old women - case study of criminal profile

Index

  1. What is a criminological profile
  2. Historical evolution of the criminal profile - the psychology of crime
  3. Areas of application of the criminological profile
  4. Types of criminal profiles: known offenders or inductive method
  5. Types of criminal profiles: unknown assailants or deductive method
  6. How to do criminal profiling: methodology
  7. How to profile criminals
  8. The criminal geographic profile
  9. Example of criminal profile

What is a criminological profile.

Following Garrido (2006)[1], the criminological or profiling profile can be defined as a estimation of the biographical and lifestyle characteristics of the person responsible for a series of crimes serious and has not yet been identified.

The objective of this profile is define the characteristics of the alleged culprit to narrow down the range of possible culprits and assist the police by targeting and restricting the possibilities of investigation, enabling them to focus on realistic targets. This point is very important, since when dealing with violent or serial crimes, social alarm and possibilities of repeating the events, make it necessary to act quickly and stop the assassin.

How to study criminal psychological profiles

Nevertheless, the criminal psychological profile has its limitations, It is not an exact science, it is based on the analysis of the psychological imprint that the murderer leaves in his crimes and in statistical data collected from other cases and from theoretical data provided by psychology and criminology. We are therefore talking about probabilities. In the words of Ressler (2005), people who make a profile look for patterns and try to find the characteristics of the probable author, analytical and logical reasoning is used, "what" plus "why" equals "who".

The criminal psychological profile - What is a criminological profile

Historical evolution of the criminal profile - the psychology of crime.

The use of psychology to combat and study crime must be related from the very beginning of it, however, it has been relatively recent in time the The intention of some experts to develop a more or less systematic methodology that helps us capture criminals using the contributions that psychology offers us.

Criminal profiling has been based mainly on the creation, development and use of classification techniques and labeling of the criminal offender, initially having as the main objective the capture of the criminal. The collection of data has enabled a more in-depth study, which has given rise to various theories psychological crime, theories that try to explain the criminal act as it does with any mental pathology. The development of therapeutic and rehabilitation techniques for crime is at a very early stage:

1888. Britain

Dr. George B. Philips designs the "model-wound" method, based on the relationship between the wounds suffered by the victim and her aggressor. Depending on the characteristics of these, a offender profile.

1870. Italy

Lombroso is considered the father of criminology. Studies prisoners from the evolutionary and anthropological point of view, giving rise to a classification of criminals that take into account physical characteristics:

  • Born Criminal: Primitive offenders characterized by a process of evolutionary degeneration that could be described by certain physical characteristics.
  • Insane criminal: Offenders suffering from mental pathologies accompanied or not by physical ones.
  • Criminaloids: They would be those who do not belong to either of the two previous groups but certain circumstances have led them to commit crimes.

1955. Germany

Kretschmer makes a study of more than 4,000 cases and designs a classification also based on physical characteristics:

  • Leptosomal: Slender and tall.
  • Athletic: Muscular, strong.
  • Picnic: short and fat.
  • Mixed: it cannot fit completely in any of the previous ones and yes in several of them.

According to this classification of types of criminal profiles, each type of offender would be related to a type of crime, thus the leptosomics are prone to theft, the athletic ones to crimes where violence is used and the picnics to deception and fraud. The previous contributions have a strong biological component and they were being abandoned for the little utility that he offered, as well as for his scientific deficiencies. Later and together with the development that psychology was treasuring, the theories left a side the physical characteristics to detect criminals and began to use characteristics psychological.

1957. USES

Brussel compares criminal behaviors with behaviors of mental patients. His New York Bomber profile it can be considered the first criminal psychological profile. 32 explosive packages in New York in eight years. Brussel examined the crime scenes and profiled the police.

The bomber is an immigrant from Europe between 40-50 years old who lived with his mother. A man who was very neat and who, because of the rounded shape of his "w", adored his mother. and she hated his father. He predicted that in his arrest he would wear a double breasted and buttoned suit. A little later, and following the clues provided by Brussel, George Metesky, an angry employee of the company where he put the first device was arrested, wearing a double-breasted and buttoned suit.

According to Brussel, his profile was fruit of the use of deductive reasoning, his experience and the calculation of probabilities. Brussel pointed to a paranoid man, a disorder that takes around 10 years to develop, which, together with the date of the first bomb, led him to the age of the profile. This disorder explains the enduring resentment, the neatness and perfection of his actions and artifacts, as well as his clothing. The notes that he left allowed to evaluate his origin, it seemed as if he was translating, which leads us to an immigrant, specifically from Eastern Europe, where bombs have historically been used as weapons of terrorism.

The Profile accuracy had a huge impact on the police, who began to respect and use the contributions that psychology could make in this type of case. Although it was still an imprecise and flawed technique, as was shown among others, in the cases of the Boston Strangler, the criminal profile was gaining acceptance and demand. This was helped by the increase in homicides in which the murderer was not a person known to the victim, which made it difficult for the police to resolve it.

1970. USES

From this date, it is vital for the development of this technique the contributions and developments made by the FBI. The psychological profile of the criminal is established as a police investigation technique to solve difficult cases, the Behavioral Sciences Unit in the FBI, a unit specialized in the design of this type of profiles. FBI agents are concerned about this issue and are specializing, including Robert Ressler. Ressler interviewed hundreds of violent criminals in prisons, analyzed and systematized all that information in the Project of Criminal Personality Investigation, created by himself and began to document certain patterns and behaviors of killers. One of his greatest contributions was that of term for "serial killer", which we will see later and its classification of serial killers:

  • Organized serial killers: they show a certain logic in what they do, they do not suffer from mental disorders that can partly explain what they do, they plan their murders, they are Premeditated and not at all spontaneous, they usually have normal or superior intelligence, they choose their victims and personalize them so that there is a relationship between them and its prey.
  • Unorganized serial killers: their actions do not use logic, they usually present mental disorders that are related to their aberrant acts, such as paranoid schizophrenia. He does not select or choose his victims, since his impulses to kill dominate him so much that he improvises, acts spontaneously and with a greater load of violence and viciousness without any message. His mental deterioration also means that he does not take care of the crime scene or do anything special to avoid being arrested. He doesn't want to relate to his victim, just destroy her.

This classification for offender profiles is currently used in profile development, although in many cases there are no pure organized or disorganized murderers and they are more of a mixture of both. However, the division has been fruitful and of great help when it comes to profiling a murderer since within his classification, the characteristics that describe one or another type of killer if it has a great consistency statistics. The terms organized and disorganized are, as Ressler puts it, easy for cops to use because they escape a bit of psychological and medical terminology. Based on the contributions of the FBI, the Criminal Profile technique has evolved and been adopted by other police forces in other countries.

In addition, various academic degrees, agencies and private organizations have been created in charge of criminal profiling. Although there is not and possibly there is not an absolute systematization of this technique, it is largely as Ressler says an art, the profile has been included as a criminal investigation technique.

The criminal psychological profile - Historical evolution of the criminal profile - the psychology in crime

Areas of application of the criminological profile.

Generally, the use of the criminological profile generally restricted to major crimes such as homicides and rapes. As we mentioned earlier, the characteristics of these events means that the police must work against the clock to resolve these cases.

What is criminal profiling for?

When working on homicides where the culprit is unknown to the victim, the profile can help shed light on the crime and guide the police in their investigations. When you want to evaluate the possibility of linking several homicides, make a profile on the perpetrator of the murders can help determine if we are dealing with a serial killer or murderers unconnected.

On other occasions, the criminal psychological profile helps to know what kind of people do we face and this weapon can be used before the capture of him, for example provoking the aggressor in the media, and after the capture of him, preparing the interrogations. Another scope of application of the profile is its theoretical function, in that the analysis and evaluation of cases serve to increase the knowledge one has about the technique itself and about the fact criminal.

The criminal psychological profile - Areas of application of the criminological profile

Types of criminal profiles: known aggressors or inductive method.

This method is based on the study of cases to, from them, extract characteristic behavior patterns of those bullies. It takes place basically in the prison environment, through structured or semi-structured interviews, although police and judicial investigations are also often used as a source of information.

The inductive profile

The study of prisoners is complemented with interviews with prison staff in their charge, as well as relatives and anyone who can provide relevant information regarding this person. Ressler, within the Criminal Personality Investigation project (PIPC), interviewed, along with collaborators, hundreds of violent criminals throughout the US prisons. In his experience, interviews with criminals are only valuable if they provide useful information to the police about their personality and actions. To do this, the interviewer must earn the trust and respect of the interviewee. (Ressler, 2006). One characteristic to take into account when choosing the interviewees is that none of them he may gain nothing from participating in the interviews, as this could skew his answers.

The criminal psychological profile - Types of criminal profiles: known aggressors or inductive method

Types of criminal profiles: unknown aggressors or deductive method.

This method is based in crime scene analysis as for his psychological evidence so that the profile of the author of that crime can be inferred. This method tries to pass from general data to individuals of a single individual. For them, the crime scene, victimology, forensic evidence, geographical, emotional and motivational characteristics of the aggressor are analyzed. To carry out this profile, the data provided by the inductive method is taken into account.

The deductive profile

To exemplify this method we take a profile made by Ressler:

"... most serial killers are white, Danny lived in a white neighborhood, if there were any black, Hispanic, or even Asian man appeared, most likely they would have noticed his presence. I thought that the murderer was not young because the murder was experimental and because the body had been abandoned a short distance from a road, elements that indicated that it was a first murder... The abandonment of the body right next to a busy road suggests that the murderer may not have the physical strength to carry the body further.. "(Ressler, 2006).

The criminal psychological profile - Types of criminal profiles: unknown aggressors or deductive method

How to do criminal profiling: methodology.

For the elaboration of a criminal profile it is necessary to analysis and evaluation of these sources:

  • Crime scene.
  • Geographic profile.
  • Modus operandi.
  • Killer's signature.
  • Victimology.

Below we explain each of these factors:

How to profile criminals.

Crime scene

The crime scene is, as the name suggests, the place the murderer has chosen to kill his victim. The scenes can be various if the killer has used several places from when he catches his victim until he leaves her. He can trap her in one place, torture her in a second, kill her in a third, and transfer her to a room to leave her there. In any case, the main scene is where the death or assault of greatest importance and the rest are secondary. Generally, it is in elementary school where there is more transfer between the murderer and his victim, which is why it is usually the one with the most psychological and physical evidence. For this reason, the protection of the crime scene or scenes is important since each clue can be key, in addition, it is necessary to evaluate if there has been a manipulation of said scene, which is often called acts of precaution or forensic conscience (when you remove evidence physical).

Modus operandi

The modus operandi is the method the killer uses To carry out his crime, he describes the techniques and decisions that the murderer has had to make. From this evaluation we obtain information about how our murderer kills and what psychological characteristics can be deduce from this method: planner, intelligent, profession that can be developed, careless, perfectionist, sadistic... The modus operandi, unlike the signature, can vary over time since, as skills, they can be learned or evolve or degenerate with subsequent crimes. The modus operandi has a functional nature. (Garrido, 2006) and has three goals:

  • Protect the identity of the offender.
  • Successfully consuming aggression.
  • Facilitate escape.

As regards the signature, this is the motive of the crime, the why, reflects the reason the killer does what he does. He gives us more in-depth information since he presents us with what he means by crime, and more psychological since he tells us about his psychological needs. The murderer maintains his stable signature throughout his criminal career, so that, even if his modus operandi changes, we can relate him to that signature. This does not mean that physically the conduct or behaviors that describe the offender's signature cannot change. The deep aspect of the signature does not change, anger, revenge, sadism remains unchanged but the way of expressing it can evolve, increase, decrease or degenerate depending on the development of the motivation to which It represents.

Victimology

The victim has a crucial importance since it is the protagonist of the criminal act, witness the crime in the first person, the criminal act falls on her and the modus operandi and the murderer's signature are represented. If the victim survives, he can provide a lot of first-hand information about his aggressor and her circumstances. If the victim dies, a psychological autopsy is necessary. This autopsy tries to collect various personal and social aspects of the victim.

It is necessary to gather a series of information Regarding your home, education, marital status, hobbies, economic situation, fears, habits, illnesses, friendships, work... From all this information, a classification of the victim is derived primarily in terms of the risk they pose to be attacked. In this case we speak of low risk and high risk victims (Ressler 2005). Obviously, high-risk victims have a higher probability of being attacked and, in addition, they do not pose many problems for their attackers. On the other hand, the study and analysis of the victim gives us information on how his murderer was relates to their victims, which provides us with an important psychological footprint to carry out the profile. In a crime there are two protagonists, the murderer and his victim, there is a relationship between them, the murderer uses the victim to tell her story, to satisfy her personal fantasies but also to record her relationship with the world. And it is in this relationship where his personality is most reflected.

The Criminal Psychological Profile - How to Profile Criminals

The criminal geographic profile.

This profile describes the geographical aspect where the offender operates, his crime scenes, the points geographical location of these crimes, his movements, the terrain in which he operates, risk zone, base of operations. The criminal geographic profile It tells us a lot about the mental map of the criminal, which is the description that the criminal has in his head of the geographical areas in which he unfolds in his life. His house, his street, his neighborhood, his city are described in the criminal's mind based on the experiences he has had with Each one of these places describes its zone of trust, its territory, the zones of influence, how it moves and moves through they.

Understanding this data can give us information about in what area does he live, where should we look for him and where he can act. Like any predator, it attacks its victims in the territory where it feels safe, its prey has less chance and can flee if necessary. Like any person, behaviors that require intimacy or that can cause some stress are easier to carry out in familiar terrain than in unknown terrain that causes us insecurity. For the serial killer, killing is his goal, but he does not forget his sense of survival that makes him try to avoid capture. That is why he will kill in those areas where he feels comfortable.

This fact can disappear in a certain type of serial killer, specifically in disorganized ones, in which their thirst for death is produced by impulses and they do not have as much control over that aspect. Generally, his mental deterioration also means that he does not plan his crimes as much. On the other hand, this mental deterioration means that he is not able to travel great distances to search for his victims or to end their lives, so he also acts in his geographical area.

Many studies have been done in this regard, of which, the Canter's circle hypothesis it has been the most fruitful. It corresponds to a study carried out with rapists in which it was found that between 50 and 70 percent of them lived in an area that could be delimited by a circle that joined the two furthest places where he had performed, many of them lived in the very center of that circle. The case study has shown that in most serial killers, their first acts are performed close to from the place where you live or work and subsequently move away as they gain security and confidence. When we say close to the place where you live, it is a relative closeness since the murderer is not going to be exposed to being recognized by acting in places very close to their home and where potential victims and witnesses can know him.

One type of assassin, the traveler, breaks this rule in that he prefers to travel far from his usual area of ​​residence to kill.

Example of criminal profile.

Once we know all the concepts related to the psychological profile of a criminal, it is time to put everything we have learned into practice. Criminology and psychological profiling is a science that requires a lot of practice and a thorough analysis of case studies. In order to do so, we offer you the following article: The murderer of old women - a case study of a criminal profile.

This article is merely informative, in Psychology-Online we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.

If you want to read more articles similar to The criminal psychological profile, we recommend that you enter our category of Legal psychology.

References

  1. Garrido, V. and López, P. (2006). The trail of the murderer. The psychological profile of criminals in the police investigation. Barcelona: Ariel.

Bibliography

  • Ressler, R.K and Shachtman, T. (2005). Serial killers. Barcelona: Ariel.
  • Abeijón, Pilar. (2005). Serial killers. Barcelona: Arcopress.
  • Raine, A and Sanmartín J. (2006). Violence and Psychopathy. Barcelona: Ariel.
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