PSY 300 Lecture Notes - Offender Profiling, Cesare Lombroso, James Gall
Document Summary
The 1700s james gall introduces phrenology. Look at the shape of someone"s head and identify traits. The region behind the ear - murder organ . Moral weakness, social factors, got themselves into bad circumstances. Terrorized in london, at least 5 women were abducted and brutalized. Dr. thomas bond performed autopsies and gave opinions on murderer. May be in the habit of wearing a cloak . Developing a criminal profile can be used for various purposes: Develop a psychological understanding of the offender - doesn"t help us find the person but helps us understand the motivation. Hazelwood et al. (1995) outlined several key attributes: Able to step back and get into the mind of the criminal. Not getting emotionally affected by the crimes. Deductive profiling: profiling an offender from evidence relating to that offender"s crimes. Problematic because you may not know all the crime scenes, you may know 4 crime scenes but there could be 12.
