Discuss the strengths and weaknesses of psychological (offender) profiling.
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Discuss the strengths and weaknesses of psychological (offender) profiling Introduction Psychological profiling has been described as an investigative technique meant to be used to aid in solving particularly unusual cases. It is essentially felt to be an art, rather than a scientific pursuit (McCann, 1992), used to draw psychological conclusions from the material evidence left behind at a crime scene. The guiding theoretical base behind this increasingly popular but controversial tool is largely from the psychological literature. Although its origins can be traced as far back as the Bible, the professional development of profiling is most likely to be attributed to the work of the Behavioural Sciences Unit (BSU) at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia. The work of Dr. Thomas Bond (1880s) following his autopsy on the last of Jack the Ripper's victims, the psychological profile of Adolf Hitler by Walter Langer during World War II and James Brussels' highly accurate sketch of...


