Essay
A.C 1.2 Assess the usefulness of investigative techniques in criminal investigations - CRIMINOLOGY UNIT 3
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A.C 1.2 - assess the usefulness of investigative techniques incriminal investigations 20 marks
- Include all techniques if question doesn't specify
● Forensics
● Surveillance techniques
● Profiling techniques
● Intelligence databases
● Interview techniques
- To every technique mention situations and types :
● Crime scene (forensics)
● Laboratory (forensics)
● Police station (interviews/profiling/surveillance)
● Street (good for violent crimes through surveillance)
● Violent crimes (forensics/surveillance)
● Ecrime ()
● Property crime (surveillance/forensics)
- Highlight these so they stand out to the marker
- Describe techniques briefly
- Focus on strengths and limitations
- Add conclusion of level of usefulness at end of each technique paragraph
, One criminal investigative technique is profiling. Profiling is split into 3 types: offender
Profiling, typological Profiling, and geographical Profiling.
Offender profiling (op) is predicting characteristics of an offender who hasn't been
found yet. This is done by viewing the details of the victim and type of crime. This
type of profiling relies on offenders leaving evidence at the crime scene (physical) for
example fingerprints but also offenders using behavioural evidence. This is where it
is noticeable by how someone was murdered and how they were left. Advantages of
this is that you can link the offender to the crimes committed, can help the
investigating process as the offender is caught faster due to a hypothesis, and also
can help police target certain suspects and resources.
Typological profiling (tp) is a type of profiling which separates offenders into different
categories based on their characteristics at the crime scene. By analysing the crime
scene, it's possible that you can predict the offenders personality, lifestyle, motives,
and relationships. The profiler puts together the evidence/information from the
forensics, the victim and the crime scene. If a crime scene is split into two categories,
organised and disorganised, they have separate characteristics. An organised crime
is controlling or attempting to control the offender, pre planned, little evidence being
left at the crime scene. Whereas a disorganised crime is with little to no preparation,
poor effort at hiding the evidence at the crime scene, little constraint, and a random
behaviour act. Whereas an organised offender is usually with a manipulative
personality, and intelligence is above average. Whilloe a disorganised offender is the
opposite therefore being below average intelligence and not usually manipulative in
general. This is really useful in violent crimes as it's easy to see if the crime was
organised or disorganised which can give you an indication for the type of offender
you're looking for.
There is also geographical profiling. Geographical Profiling is when you predict where
a suspect may be from based on their location of crime. Offenders can either travel to
commit crime(maunders) or stay local. Usually organised crimes and offenders travel
however not always as if they believe they can get away with the crime without
needing a support of the wrong location. This method of profilling is very useful
shown by, 120 murder cases in the usa was collected by samantha lundrigan and
david canter (2001). This analysis revealed consistency in behaviour of killers: the
location of the body where it was disposed was different to the previous crime scene.
This creates a ‘centre of gravity’ and the offender's base is usually at the centre
pattern. Therefore supporting canters argument the geographical/spatial information
is a major factor when determining where an offender is based.
All profiling is done in the police station by psychological profilers. Profiling is useful
in violent crimes as you're able to use the evidence found at the crime scene to put
together a characterised offender. This narrows down suspects and can help lead to
the offender at a much faster rate than without it. However if no evidence is found at
the crime scene, then profiling isn't useful at all as you can’t make an accurate
profile. This can lead to misconvictions of innocent people. Another problem with
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