Criminal Profiling: An Introduction to Behavioral Evidence Analysis - Hardcover

Turvey, Brent E.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 012705040X ISBN 13: 9780127050409

Publisher: Academic Press, 1999

Synopsis

Criminal Profiling: An Introduction to Behavioral Evidence Analysis is a unique work centered on the Deductive Profiling method developed by the author. Deductive Profiling is different from other forms of profiling because it centers the process on forensic evidence and does not involve the use of averaged, statistical profiles. It approaches each criminal incident as its own universe of behaviors and relationships.
Criminal Profiling includes a thorough rendering of the features of the deductive profiling method, an overview of the legal aspects involved in profiling, and an exploration into specific profiling issues that arise in different types of serial crime. It also includes the author's unique analysis of the Whitechapel Murders (Jack the Ripper) of 1888 and the JonBenet Ramsey homicide of 1996.
Criminal Profiling is a perfect companion for students and professionals in the law enforcement, mental health, criminological, and legal communities.

Key Features
* A unique approach--centered on the author's Deductive Profiling method
* Addresses related issues, such as ethics, clinical perspectives, and the essential role of the task force
* Provides a unique analysis of the Whitechapel Murders (Jack the Ripper) and the JonBenet Ramsey case
* Boasts the support of the world's leading forensic authors and profilers (Saferstein, Lee, Gebeth, Hare, and Teten)
* Written in a style accessible to a wide audience--from the detective performing hands-on casework to the academician in the classroom

About this title

About the Author

Brent E. Turvey spent his first years in college on a pre-med track only to change his course of study once his true interests took hold. He received a Bachelor of Science degree from Portland State University in Psychology, with an emphasis on Forensic Psychology, and an additional Bachelor of Science degree in History. He went on to receive his Masters of Science in Forensic Science after studying at the University of New Haven, in West Haven, Connecticut. Since graduating in 1996, Brent has consulted with many agencies, attorneys, and police departments in the United States, Australia, China, Canada, Barbados and Korea on a range of rapes, homicides, and serial/ multiple rape/ death cases, as a forensic scientist and criminal profiler. He has also been court qualified as an expert in the areas of criminal profiling, forensic science, victimology, and crime reconstruction. In August of 2002, he was invited by the Chinese People's Police Security University (CPPSU) in Beijing to lecture before groups of detectives at the Beijing, Wuhan, Hanzou, and Shanghai police bureaus. In 2005, he was invited back to China again, to lecture at the CPPSU, and to the police in Beijing and Xian - after the translation of the 2nd edition of his text into Chinese for the University. In 2007, he was invited to lecture at the 1st Behavioral Sciences Conference at the Home Team (Police) Academy in Singapore, where he also provided training to their Behavioral Science Unit. He is the author of Criminal Profiling: An Introduction to Behavioral Evidence Analysis, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Editions (1999, 2002, 2008); co- author of the Rape Investigation Handbook (2004), Crime Reconstruction (2006), and Forensic Victimology (2008) - all with Elsevier Science. He is currently a full partner, Forensic Scientist, Criminal Profiler, and Instructor with Forensic Solutions, LLC, and an Adjunct Professor of Justice Studies at Oklahoma City University. He can be contacted via email at: bturvey@forensic-science.com.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

From the Foreword: "Criminal Profiling: An Introduction to Behavioral Evidence Analysis" is first and foremost a book organized and designed to instruct on the subject of its title. It was the movie "The Silence of the Lambs," that widely popularized the role of the criminal profiler in a law enforcement setting, and it's talk TV and radio that has now nourished its reputation and public acceptance as an integral component of the criminal investigation process. For forensic scientists, such as myself, profiling is a curiosity of sorts. Is this just another ploy by wanabe scientists looking for acceptance and recognition, or is the profiler a legitimate adjunct to the criminal investigative process? As with any new endeavor, the answers are not clear cut. Often the power of personality and individual charisma, along with the old-boy network has determined whether profiling information will be sought in an investigation, and just who will provide the service. Nevertheless, the passage of time has had the effect of imposing discipline and order on the profiling profession.

"Criminal Profiling" amply demonstrates that this endeavor is emerging as a legitimate adjunct to crime investigation services, but with the caveat often cited by the author that profiling is a discipline that demands adherence to the principles of team work between all the elements of the investigation. I find it particularly gratifying that the author places great emphasis on the necessity for the profiler to thoroughly evaluate physical evidence which has been properly analyzed in a scientific setting. Likewise, the author places strong emphasis on the requirement to evaluate information derived from a systematic reconstruction of the crime scene. While such efforts certainly are necessary adjuncts to reduce the subjectivity associated with criminal profiling, the reader is being continually reminded throughout the book that profiling is ultimately an art dependent on the experiences and expertise of the profiler.

Through the efforts of Brent Turvey and other professionals, criminal profiling is materializing into a structured discipline amenable to the confines of the classroom. Now this certainly does not mean that the reader can expect to complete this book and wear the garb of an instant expert. Years of practical investigative experience is an essential ingredient of the successful profiler. Nevertheless, the legitimization of criminal profiling as a profession demands that it has strong and acceptable academic underpinnings. "Criminal Profiling" satisfies those objectives.

"Criminal Profiling" is a serious and long overdue effort at structuring a body of knowledge into a cohesive subject. Brent Turvey has provided the reader with a roadmap to comprehending the principles underlying criminal profiling. The knowledge gleaned from this book can only strengthen the foundational skills of the perspective and active criminal investigator.

Richard Saferstein, Ph.D.

From Chapter 4: The use of the scientific method makes serious headway in liberating the profiler from many personal biases such as race or gender prejudices, stereotypes, and personal experience/ anecdotal generalizations. It also marshals the profiler from using unrelated yet similar cases as a basis for interpretations and conclusions regarding the motivations of a particular offender. Only the behavior patterns recognizable in the behavioral evidence in the case(s) at hand should be allowed to influence the final profile.

This is in keeping with one of the major tenets of deductive profiling, which is that no two criminals, or people, are exactly alike. Each is the product of a unique set of sequential, developmental experiences and emotional/ psychological associations at varying continuums of intensity. Therefore each criminal has the potential to create crime scenes in their own way, to satisfy their own psychological and emotional needs. There may be general similarities across criminals, but the deductive method of criminal profiling can be used to help illuminate the differences in the meaning of convergent behaviors to individual offenders.

Do not get the impression that this author is attempting to pass the deductive method of criminal profiling off as a science. That kind of overstatement would not be appropriate. This is due to the reality that the motives and origins of human behavior are far too multi-determined for that kind of predictable certainty. The first three general steps of the deductive profiling process (forensic analysis, victimology, and crime scene characteristics) are for the most part based on the scientific tenets of crime scene reconstruction, and the established forensic sciences. These three steps are best viewed as a language for crime scene reconstruction, as an expression of what occurred and how. However the fourth step, the deduction of offender characteristics from a convergence of physical and behavioral evidence, is still considerably artful, and therefore a matter of expertise and not science. All four steps comprise the final, fully rendered criminal profile. The process of analyzing and recognizing behavior patterns in that physical and behavioral evidence, and deducing or inferring offender characteristics, is referred to by the author as Behavioral Evidence Analysis.

From Chapter 9: The emotional coping mechanisms of a large number of detectives, investigators, and forensic personnel involve continuous doses of personal detachment and dissociation from the victim. The victim is seen as an object. Their body, living or deceased, and all of the terrible things done to it, are regarded as things to be examined and analyzed. The advantage of this coping mechanism is that there is no emotional investment, no opening up to be affected by the pain and suffering of something that is only an impersonal object of analysis. However, the disadvantage is that we risk surrendering our humanity when we regard victims, and their suffering, in this way.

We risk losing our humanity because this type of coping mechanism continually demands that we do things to reinforce our view of the victim as an object. If we humanize victims, we know that there is the risk of recognizing that they are not unlike our own daughter, son, mother, father, sister, brother, wife, husband, or friend. In order to maintain this necessary detachment, we actively deprive ourselves of knowledge about the victim as a person. We do not get to know them; we do not want to familiarize ourselves with their personal lives outside of the crimes committed against them. We do not wish to make time to see them as people-all of this because it might affect us emotionally.

This is, in the author's view, why the performance of a thorough victimology is not routine practice for many detectives, investigators, and forensic personnel. When done competently, victimology forces us to get to know the victim better than we know most of the people in our own lives. It opens us up to potential emotional internalizations, where we make a victim's personal feelings our own. It also opens us up to potential emotional transference, where we shift our thoughts and feelings about other people onto the victim. Getting to know the intimate details of a victim's history and personality is not emotionally safe.

But it is necessary."

Edition details

• Publisher: Academic Press
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 012705040X
• ISBN 13: 9780127050409
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 462