4.5 Decision Processing

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4.5 Decision Processing – Murder
Determining the type of crime and the crime style is crucial in order to create a structure for profiling. There are quite a few points that help organize the data from the profiling input stage into patters. For example, for a murder there are several points that are important in order to understand the mindset of the offender. The first point is identifying the type and style of the crime. There are quite a few different types of murders, there is single homicide, double homicide, triple homicide, mass murder, and serial murder. For single, double, and triple homicides, they have a number of victims from one event based on their respective numbers, so a triple homicide would have three victims from one event.
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In the stage, the law enforcement agents restructure the sequence of events and the behavior of the victim, as well as the offender. By reconstructing what happened, how people acted, and the encounter was organized provides information about the offender’s characteristics. The classification of the crime classification, the offender’s choice of the victim, the sequence of the crime, as well as other aspects of the crime as all assessed in this stage. There are two different classifications of crime, organized and unorganized. In an organized crime, the offender carefully plans out every little detail about the crime that he/she is about to commit. The plan who/what they are going to target, when they will strike, as well as how they will get away. In an unorganized crime, the offender does not really plan ahead so the victims are typically chosen at random. Another aspect that needs to be discovered is whether or not the crime was staged. This means figuring out if the offender was actually unorganized, or if he/she made it look that way to throw off the police. Determining if a crime was staged or not is important because it can help law enforcement agents understand the offender’s motivation. An offender’s motivation is the reason he/she is committing these acts and required understanding the inner thoughts and behavior of the offender. Motivation is tricky to understand in an unorganized crime, since …show more content…
After analyzing the offender’s behavior and the crime scene, the law enforcement agents can begin to create a strategy for apprehending the offender. Any information about the offender is needed in order to create an accurate profile. Information such as their age, sex, physical characteristics, and where they live. This is necessary because the law enforcement agents are attempting to predict how the offender will react to different situations. All of the previous data is studied and review in order to make sure that the profile is correct. If there is any error at any point, the offender has a chance to escape apprehension from law enforcement officials. The more information that is known about the offender, the more accurate the profile can be (Criminal Profiling from Crime Scene