Ethics and the Art of Profiling Essay

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Debating the Value and Ethical Concerns of Psychological Profiling

Introduction

A psychological profile is created by combining individual profiles, such as a victim profile with an offender profile or a geographical profile and even a DNA profile. Through the combination of individual profiles, the psychological profile emerges with a comprehensive view of the type of person most likely to be found at a particular place at a particular time with such and such type of victim or such and such type of crime/offense being committed. Psychological profiling is both an “investigative aid” and a “conceptual tool” that is used by police to understand cases and create leads (Wilson, Lincoln & Kocsis, 1997, p. 1). Vorpagel (1982) described psychological profiling as the exercise of identifying “behavioral patterns, trends, and tendencies” used to develop a complete picture—not just of the individuals involved in a crime—but of the type of individuals who would likely be involved in crimes of a similar nature in the future. As such psychological profiling has been viewed as a key tool in the development of criminal justice. However, critics have claimed that it unfairly generalizes and creates ethical issues that should be of concern for criminal justice professionals. This paper will discuss the advantages and disadvantages of psychological profiling, the ethical concerns, and the approaches that can be used to overcome them.

Advantages

The advantages of psychological profiling are: (a) it gives law enforcement personnel the opportunity to work with mental health experts to identify patterns of behavior that can be linked with specific types of criminal activity, (b) it allows for a database to be created with profiles developed based on real cases that can be used to help law enforcement personnel solve cases and in some instances even prevent crimes from occurring, and (c) profiles can be established that will predict not just criminal behavior but ordinary behavior as well, which allows a complete picture of a suspect to be created (Kocsis, 2003; Wilson et al., 1997). In short, the art or science of psychological profiling allows law enforcement agents to follow a standard that can be applied to crime scene investigation to help sort out the myriad facts and details of a case, reduce the risk of human error in an investigation, and provide officers with a more robust and fuller description of the type of individuals to be on the lookout for as they pursue a case (Egger, 1999).

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Disadvantages

Profiles can be and often are flawed to some degree (Wilson et al., 1997). Snook, Cullen, Bennell, Taylor and Gendreau (2008) note that psychological profiling is not as efficient as its proponents make it out to be: it is often ineffective or at best inconsistent at providing any sort of predictive value in a case; its reputation among investigators is based more on anecdotal evidence than on scientific or empirical proof; the argument in favor of profiling is typically based on authority, which is a logical fallacy; and whenever profiling is used to solve a case, it could well be argued that the investigators in these instances are creating their own meaning out of what amount to essentially ambiguous facts that are then interpreted to fit the nature of the case as it develops (Snook et al., 2008).

For these reasons, the value of psychological profiling is controversial: it is a topic that is divisive, with some believing it offers an advantage to criminal investigators and brings value to the field of criminal justice; others claim that the empirical evidence of profiling’s validity has yet to be offered and that the practice is merely suggestive and does not lead to a higher success rate in terms of prosecuting crime.

Ethical Concerns

As with any type of profiling, whether racial, DNA, geographical, or psychological, there are ethical concerns and issues that have to be addressed. One of the main ethical issues with psychological profiling is the lack of uniformity among the various approaches to the practice. Both inductive and deductive approaches to profiling occur; inductive approaches take findings from a case and apply them to theory; deductive approaches take theories and apply them to cases. Because so many different fields—from forensic nursing to forensic anthropology to forensic psychiatry and FBI agency—apply profiling, the lack of standardization,….....

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