AJ 012 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Moe Williams, Offender Profiling, Serial Crime

• School: Pasadena City College
• Department: Administration of Justice
• Course: AJ 012
• Professor: yang

Document Summary

Profiling- drawing inferences about a criminal"s personality, behavior, motivation, and demographics based on crime scene and other evidence. Assist investigators; most famously applied to serial killers. Emphasize the signature aspect of the crime . Description of fbi developed profile to assist investigators. Jack the ripper (1888) (first subject of a criminal profile) Olympic bomber (1996) (incorrectly accused by criminal profiler) Mad bomber (1957) (detailed and accurate profile captured suspect) Domination of victim and drug use before killing them. No characteristic list describes every serial killer. Visionary: are psychotic, hears voices, see visions. Mission-oriented: kill people they believe are evil. Power-oriented: get satisfaction from victim capture and control before killing. 1990: early experimental study; differences in trained profilers and other groups, but only for sex offender case (pinizzotto and finkel) 2000s: profilers" accuracy rates generally less than 50% (kocsis and colleagues) 2002: no discernible demographic resemblance between criminals who committed very similar crimes (alison)