CRIMINAL PROFILING AND ITS RELEVANCE IN THE NIGERIAN CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM

CRIMINAL PROFILING AND ITS RELEVANCE IN THE NIGERIAN  CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM

CHAPTER ONE

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

This statement made by the world‘s famous fictional detective, Sherlock Holmes, and his endearing ability to solve crime by describing the perpetrator from factual deductions is a skill shared by the expert investigative profiler. Evidence speaks of its own language of patterns and sequences that can reveal the offender‘s behavioural characteristics. Like Sherlock Holmes, the profiler can say I know who he must be‖. It is not uncommon to watch in the news, read in the newspapers or in major documentaries about serial killers and violent criminals who murder, rape or assault victims due to certain similar features that the victims all possess or out of certain distorted motive or intentions. Most serial killers and violent criminals are psychologically impaired based on a peculiar past experience that make them seek some form of personal vendetta against persons who look or act like those that have hurt them in the past or just out of sheer perverse pleasure. These crimes are committed in peculiar manners with little or no material evidence linking the offenders to the act making it more difficult for the law enforcement to apprehend them. Forensic analysts and psychologists over the years have sought means of identifying such criminals based on their mode of operation, signature behaviour, target victims and material evidence from previous crime scenes. This is where the process of criminal profiling is applied.

Criminal profiling has been defined in many ways by various scholars based on their distinct backgrounds and as such, been called many names such as criminal personality profiling, criminological profiling, behavioural profiling, criminal investigative analysis2, offender profiling, psychological profiling, crime scene analysis, socio-psychological profiling and linkage analysis3 Despite the different names, all of these tactics share a common goal: to help investigators examine evidence from crime scenes and victim and witness reports to develop an offender description. Holmes states that the major function of profiling is to assist in the detection of offenders by extrapolating their personal attributes from information available in crimes.4 Criminal profiling is the identification of specific characteristics of an individual committing a particular crime by thorough systematic observational process and an analysis of the crime scene, the victim, the forensic evidence and the known facts of the crime. It is acknowledging the skewed validity of the perpetrator‘s perspective to be able to predict him ―without allowing yourself to become lost in him and his world‖5. Criminal profiling is a behavioural and investigative tool that is intended to help investigators to accurately predict and profile the characteristics of unknown criminal subjects or offenders.6 A basic premise of criminal profiling is that the way a person thinks (i.e., his or her patterns of thinking) directs the person‘s behaviour. Thus, when the investigative profiler analyzes a crime scene and notes certain critical factors, he or she may be able to determine the motive and type of person who committed the crime.7 All the information from the crime scene is a reflection of the criminal‘s behaviour and this behaviour can create a surprisingly accurate picture of the offender.8 This technique has been used by criminal psychologists who are experts in this field to examine criminal behaviour and to evaluate as well as possibly predict the future actions of criminals.

Described as psychological profiling, it is a method of suspect identification which seeks to identify a person's mental, emotional, and personality characteristics (as manifested in things done or left at the crime scene)9 Criminal profiling is a relatively new enforcement practice. It newly emerged in the last two decades and still remains a highly controversial tool.10

It has become part of public consciousness even though many people are not really sure what it is and the great majority of people have no idea at all of how it is done. This ignorance is just as prevalent in professional circles as amongst the lay public.11 Despite the widespread use of criminal profiling in serial crime investigations, the practice continues to endure fierce criticism from researchers, who almost unanimously agree that profiling lacks scientific foundation and depends on flawed methodology. As a result the validity and utility of criminal profiling is compromised to the extent where evidence is not admissible in court, and serious miscarriages of justice are caused. Profilers are often characterized as being socially alienated individuals, deeply troubled by their own selfless insights into the minds of the unknown offenders that they are hunting. This view presented by fiction and the media not only is completely false but also vehemently misleading.12

TOPIC: CRIMINAL PROFILING AND ITS RELEVANCE IN THE NIGERIAN  CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM

Format: MS Word

Chapters: 1 - 5, Abstract, References
Delivery: Email

Number of Pages: 80

Price: 3000 NGN

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