Inductive Profiling Essay

Words: 578
Pages: 3

Inductive Profiling
When looking at a crime it is not always clear what happened or who the perpetrator may be, but it has become easier as more and more perpetrators have been apprehended. The FBI uses this to their advantage by interviewing these perpetrators and creating a database that has the psychosociological profiles of past offenders, and because of this the FBI has been able to use inductive profiling tactics more frequently. Inductive profiling is a technique that uses the statistics and information of past perpetrators to infer what the perpetrator they are trying to apprehend may be like (Verde & Nurra, 2010). In Verde and Nurra’s (2010) article on criminal profiling they talked about how this database and technique of profiling
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The study collected information from 159 serial murderers to create psychosociological profiles that law enforcement could use to compare to their present cases. The study revealed that, “the most common method used during the process of inflicting death was mutilation (55% of incidents), followed by strangulation or suffocation (33% of incidents), and bludgeoning (25%)” (Woodworth, 2000, p 6). This puts forth that those who kill prefer to use their hands rather then a weapon. With this information, Woodworth and Porter (2000) agreed that profilers need to take this information into account when refining their skills in order to create more accurate profiles. They also then argue that because inductive profiling uses statistics, profilers create a general profile for all killers instead of different profiles for different circumstances. With the rise in active serial murderers in the United States there is more pressure for profiling to become more accurate, and because inductive profiling is an easy tactic to create profiles, they start to use the technique more often rather then using it as a starting point, which without evidence of accuracy can back fire (Woodworth,