The Roles of FBI in Criminal Profiling Essay

Whenever a heinous crime is committed in the United States, the law enforcement agencies automatically begin to carry out investigations that aim to identify the suspects behind it. The probes are declared futile and exhaustive when the law enforcement agencies are unable to gather realistic threshold of evidence that can pin down any criminal (Shelton, 2013). At this stage, the agencies involved in the investigations will forward the investigative duties to the FBI profilers and provide them with the details of the case(J. Amber Scherer, 2014). The FBI will then work on the way to profile the suspects and to narrow down the search. This discussion will explore the roles of the NCACV and the BSU units of the FBI in criminal profiling.

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The cornerstone of the BSU profilers is to study the trends and to develop a nuanced understanding of the motivation behind crimes like kidnappings, serial killings, serial raping and the escape behaviors of the perpetrators (The FBI Story 2016, 2016). This unit does most of its work by researching the minds of the criminals. The BSU has medical practitioners and psychiatrists and psychologists who understand the functionality of the human brain for proper examination of suspects.

The multidisciplinary approach of the BSU specialists with an extensive wealth of experience in psychology, crime scene expertise, criminal investigative expertise and forensic analogy. The skill from this collection of specialists is material in analyzing the psychopathic personality tendencies of suspects who exhibit a complete disregard for social standards of behavior (The FBI Story 2016, 2016). Those who have failed to reform after standard forms of punishment, individuals who appear to have no guilt, people with a desire for instant satisfaction, undue dependence on other people and those that express extroverted personalities.

The NCAVC has within it four other units of the BSU that delves on the crimes against adults, counter-terrorism/threat assessment, crimes against children and the violent criminal groups. These units consider various factors that determine profile. These factors include age, sex, ethnicity, and upbringing. The marital statuses, lifestyles, intelligence and academic historical data are collected from suspects (The FBI Story 2016, 2016). Socio-economic standings, work habits, sexual adjustments. The profiling will also include appearance, hygiene habits and emotional tendencies of the suspects.

The NCAVC studies and analyses the signature of the suspects' serial offense to uncover their identity. The signature is a consistent trend in crime that could involve specific times of committing the crime, are acts that an offender commit in the crime scene that is not necessarily related to the mission of the crime (Ramsland, 2014). These are parts of the actions that an offender commits to satisfy their underlying but compulsively troubling psychological needs. An example of a signature behavior could be a serial killer chopping a body part of their victims after killing them.

The significant offenders that the BSU investigation mostly include serial killers, the terror frighteners, arsonists, rapists and any violent crimes whose perpetrators are likely to be dedicated to causing harm to many people either in sequential operations or once to cause mass murder (Ramsland, 2014). The investigations focus on these group because their behaviors are mostly predictable and are inspired by some mental disorder and they are mostly bound to commit the crime repeatedly in the future (J. Amber Scherer, 2014). Though they focus more on the aforementioned crimes, the BSU also offer investigative support in other areas in American that include corruption scandals, cybercrime, and national security.

The FBI is the ultimate investigator of crime, and they have no rivals for the stealth with which they carry out their investigations. Their work is made easy because they have access to information needed to build up extensive and intensive investigations that guarantee accurate and conclusive results, they are well funded and have high-level expertise.

References

J. Amber Scherer, J. P. (2014, September 24). Criminal Investigative Analysis. The FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin. Retrieved July 14, 2018, from https://leb.fbi.gov/articles/featured-articles/criminal-investigative-analysis-applications-for-the-courts-part-four-of-four

Ramsland, K. (2014, March 23). Criminal Profiling: How It All Began. The Psychology Today. Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/shadow-boxing/201403/criminal-profiling-how-it-all-began

Shelton, T. A. (2013). The FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit III: Crimes Against Children. In T. A. Shelton, Suicide Among Child Sex Offenders. Springer; New York: SpringerBriefs in Psychology.

The FBI Story 2016. (2016, December 5). Retrieved from Federal Bureau of Investigation: https://www.fbi.gov/resources/library