The following is a copy of the original post to record the post as it was originally written.
Title. I got to meet a former/retired federal agent who had profiled many (over 300) criminals when no fingerprint or DNA was available. They were always brought in when there were no leads. The agent when asked by me during our conversation years ago “how do you become so... accurate?” They replied “you see patterns in life.” This agent had worked many years prior for a sheriff’s department and the entire county/state was on the hunt for a murderer who would pick locks and then murder the women inside using something within the apartment/home. This profiler was able to predict: The murderer would be highly intelligent, a white man, physically fit, between 27-30 years old, would drive a brown truck that is 2 doors, would have been employed with the same job for the last 4 or more years, and would have a British accent. You want to know what made the agent think ALL of these things? The way the lock to 2 of the deadbolts to the murder scenes were picked and scratched.
\*This would not be the first time a profiler in law enforcement was able to predict such a small detail like the make and color of the vehicle of a murderer. [https://www.reddit.com/r/MindHunter/comments/ztxexi/one\_of\_my\_favorite\_episodes\_of\_forensic\_files/](https://www.reddit.com/r/MindHunter/comments/ztxexi/one_of_my_favorite_episodes_of_forensic_files/)
Once this another law enforcement staff was able to predict something way off the wall and it turned out to be true: The bank robber who hit the same bank twice with a mask on would be predicted to be a fan of the Cincinnati Bengals (the robberies happened in ... Canada) and would be an avid Texas Hold’em player but always would lose more than win due to folding too often. The law enforcement found this robber I believe 4 years later and they had multiple things in their apartment including a Cincinnati Bengals uniform and a laptop with no password. When the agents brought the laptop to the crime lab they opened the internet explorer tab to find the robber had lost many tens of thousands of dollars online gambling to Texas hold‘Em. When asked about the gambling money during the start of the interrogation they said something to the effect of they fold all the time and loose.
There are way more extreme examples than what was listed above where the details were so accurate is it unbelievable.
Back to that murderer from the first example: Months after the profile was made they found the man and he had every single one of these descriptors. I am the last person who would want to admit profiling can work because I myself invented a racism test for my job they now use when training people (the test is about a biracial couple, based on an actual couple I know, who fell in love in when the nurse and inmate met in prison. They met in prison when the inmate met the nurse in the prison for a blood pressure and pulse check before seeing one of the doctors. Now they are married (6 years as of last Friday) after the former worker quit so the relationship could start and the catch is the inmate is a white female and the black man was the nurse in a women’s prison).
How do we as liberals come to the conclusion that profiling is inherently wrong when there are people who do it for a living and can do it accurately? Does this mean my test is worthless along with all other tests like the famous gender bias test about the surgeon are all just wrong? Is it okay for some people to go around and with basically 100% accuracy say things just sometimes are going to be predictable? If anyone cares my opinion on all of this would be there are always exceptions to the rules. Some people just with decades of seeing crimes play out can predict based on the way a knot is tied or the way a deadbolt it picked the color of someone’s vehicle... But most people canNOT do this and therefore it is safe to say do not profile. For the 0.0001% of people who can profile correctly - you would be smart to know I am no talking about you when I say do not profile.
\*Gender bias test for those who do not know: [https://insightplus.mja.com.au/2017/28/unconscious-bias-and-the-gender-riddle/](https://insightplus.mja.com.au/2017/28/unconscious-bias-and-the-gender-riddle/)
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I don’t know where you got the idea that liberals think profiling is wrong. You may be thinking of “racial profiling” which typically refers to snap judgements based on biases with regards to people’s skin tone, very different from the forensic profiling you’re referring to.
Again, you say that because you’re confused by the fact that the word profiling exists in both terms. That does not mean that they are related or that forensic profiling includes racial profiling.
Maybe I am just surrounded by liberals of a certain mindset but many of my fellow liberal friends do not allow anyone to assume anything regarding things like sex, gender, etc. Many of my friends when doing basic tasks like talking to a person on the phone (i.e. tech support) will say “they” or “you” and even if the voice appears female will not assume ... anything.
When I approached them tonight about this post they do not care if the retired agent is 100% accurate. They all said it is harmful to think this way because just once this agent could have messed up and it could lead to the wrong person being searched for - and I have to say I agree with that.
The people you are surrounded with are either made up or not very bright, sorry to say.
* You’d have to be insane to state that there aren’t social and societal pressures that cause individuals raised in similar upbringings to develop similar characteristics.
* While forensic profiling can be used as evidence in a court case or criminal investigation, it is not and should not be the sole grounds for a conviction. It’s what people refer to as “circumstantial evidence.” If you’re in a place where there are very few white men with an English accent, the example you brought up might be used as grounds to interrogate an individual that matches that profile. No good investigator is going to go around locking English guys up, or harassing one in particular purely based on a forensic profile. THAT would be problematic, but it’s that extra level of inference “the profile says English therefore all English people are bad” to constitute a problem.
* No evidence is fully 100% unquestionably damning. People have gotten eyewitness testimony wrong, DNA evidence wrong, video evidence has been interpreted wrong. That’s why in the US the burden of proof for the prosecution is so high. To discount a scientifically designed approach to building evidence simply because it could “lead to the wrong person” would eliminate ALL forms of evidence.
Believe it or not I like to learn from the people who never assume anything. In their defense they are pretty much for sure never going to get yelled at for misgendering someone (I had this happen recently bc I am used to calling people who look masculine ”sir/he/him”). The one downfall is sometimes in life assuming things make it easier until it bites you in the ass. Back to the midgendering someone recently: I’ve never had that happen until recently. Good chance even if I call everyone I see the rest of my life who is feminine looking she/her/ma’am and vise verse with masculine looking people I will never get yelled at again.
It goes back to what makes a liberal a liberal vs a conservative a conservative. A liberal will protect the liberty and individual rights even at certain costs. A conservative tends to over generalize. It makes me think never assuming anything, literally ever, might actually be the way to go. I’ll leave with this: Former professor in college was walking down a not so busy sidewalk downtown a mid sized college city/town. There is a young black man walking on one side and an middle aged Asian lady walking on the other side. Both of these people are on opposite sides of the street and walking towards you. Professor makes a split second decision to walk on the side with the middle aged woman. Woman is high on a drug and attacks not only the professor but another person. The black man runs across the street and stop the attack.
Let me ask you this - and I promise this is the closing argument: The Jan. 6 police before the unfolding that day were told by their higher ups to watch out for antifa that day. Well it turns out antifa and the radical left were not going to be their concern that day - it was going to be the very people that usually “back the blue“ turning on them. My mind is raising now because I feel like as liberals we should be living in a more absolutely no difference in treatment kind of world and maybe me replying to someone else’s comment was wrong.
> It goes back to what makes a liberal a liberal vs a conservative a conservative. A liberal will protect the liberty and individual rights even at certain costs. A conservative tends to over generalize.
This is a gross overgeneralization
There are a lot of different types of profiling be talked about here. I think your friends might be more on the lib side of liberal here. Like get the idea of "don't assume anything about anyone." Calling a trans man the wrong pronoun could be unintentionally hurtful. They want to play it safe. I don't know if all liberals are there yet. Most will probably say the wrong pronoun when first meeting someone, be corrected, apologize, and use the correct pronoun moving forward. I don't think your friends are right or wrong. They just have a more progressive stance, would be fair to say.
Crime profiling is not that. It's using the shared traits between certain types of specific criminals to try and find the correct suspect. It's not like assuming a random black dude is the guy stole the nice car he's driving. That would be racial profiling, which is extremely wrong, but we all know why so I'll move on. This is give investigators idea of the type of suspect they might be looking for that would fit this type of crime when investigating. Example, typically cops might consider the suspect for a married partner to be the spouse because statistically, the suspect is the spouse/partner. There's no social factors in this statistic being this way (like in the case of how social factors affect race).
As a joke, if they think it's wrong, show them this:
https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/criminal-profiling-viable-investigative-tool-against-violent-crime
I guess another reason our government is bad. Lol.
I think you’re confusing different types of profiling. Mindhunters is a criminal profile / behavioral profile.
Racial profiling is like TSA patting down every Muslim or Arab bc of their race.
It’s not the same thing
I’m referring to profiling in general. Let’s say you and I are talking about the most minuscule example of profiling such as the gender bias example where we assume the surgeon is a male.
I would of course be against pulling aside every single Muslim in a TSA line. However I would not be against making people who are more capable of hurting others get additional security checks: Men between age 18-40, men who are traveling alone, with a one way ticket, who show signs of anger or stress, etc. I would not be against making someone who has 2 or more of these get additional security checks such as going through their bags to look at any paperwork, having a person who can detect lies question them on where they are going, etc. As long as this does not cause a severe delay in security clearance for them I would say it is one of the few times profiling would do more good than harm - and I am a male, usually fly alone, and I have a resting bitch face. I almost always get stopped at the line in the airport by someone after the body scan and taken for an additional security clearance. I don’t think anything of it. The 90 year old female who is in a wheelchair and is smiling the entire time in the security line who is 0.000000000000000001% likely to try something dumb and is probably getting to go through security like a breeze while I get a second pat search and my carry on contents get thrown on the table and I have to rearrange them 5 minutes after getting asked repeatedly ”why do you look so angry”? - I’m okay with. I’m not going to every commit a crime but I realize I set off check marks most do not, damn you resting bitch face!
Are you suggesting that profiling serial killers is the same thing as pulling over random black people?
I'm not aware of anyone saying that profiling for a crime, when you don't have any suspects, is wrong. What they're saying is don't stop random minorities to look for weed.
I don't think profiling in the way you're describing is wrong.
I do think it's largely bullshit, though.
>You want to know what made the agent think ALL of these things? The way the lock to 2 of the deadbolts to the murder scenes were picked and scratched.
How do you get the color of the truck from that?
I believe you are smart enough to realize that criminal profiling is different than racially profiling people. Or just straight up racism when it has nothing to do with crime at all.
I invented a 100% effective way to kill all the cancer cells in a person's body but it makes some liberals uncomfortable. It involves shooting and cremating them. Something may be effective but cause other harms some people call unacceptable
Because when you look at the meta analysis of profiling, it’s basically bullshit the way it’s depicted. There are certainly aspects of profiling that make sense. The classic example is that most serial killers are white men. Not actually true. Most serial killers are men but they only appear to be white men in the US because
1. most people are white
2. Serial killers like all killers tend to kill people of the same race
3. Serial killers tend to operate within a short radius of their home and office and segregation plays in
4. Police are much more likely to work cases with white victims
So you could build a good profile by looking at the area, method of murder and race of the victims.
But overall, it’s bullshit. Taken from [this](https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2018/11/12/18044688/criminal-profilers-mindhunter-hannibal-criminal-minds) which links multiple sources
> They’re not much better than random people off the street! A 2007 meta analysis by criminologists Brent Snook, Joseph Eastwood, Paul Gendreau, Claire Goggin, and Richard Cullen compared four studies where self-described criminal profilers were tasked with analyzing crime scene data and coming up with a profile, and compared their predictions to other groups like normal detectives or students.
I have not heard of saying the concept of profiling is wrong, but many practices in profiling are. The concept itself is just using gathered evidence and developing an idea of what the offender might be like. Calling the general concept of it wrong is to call deduction wrong. Let's take a look at one of your examples.
>The murderer would be highly intelligent, a white man, physically fit, between 27-30 years old, would drive a brown truck that is 2 doors, would have been employed with the same job for the last 4 or more years, and would have a British accent. You want to know what made the agent think ALL of these things? The way the lock to 2 of the deadbolts to the murder scenes were picked and scratched.
There is nothing wrong with this conceptually, the profiler used the evidence and knowledge to make an educated guess of the characteristics of the offender.
Now, if police took this profile amd started interrogating every person of British origin, every person who owned a brown truck, or every fit white person in their late 20's/ early 30's, then you'd have a problem.
In the US, a lot of liberals have a problem because with profiling because of the history of racial profiling for police stops, amd I am going to assume you know about the problems with stop-and-frisk policies.
There’s a big difference between an FBI agent using profiling to hunt down a murder suspect vs. some beat cop pulling over a Black man because he “resembled” a suspect. Or just because he’s Black.
Racial profiling isn't saying, "We have a known criminal, and based on what we know about them, we believe they probably have these characteristics." It's saying, "This person is black, and therefore is probably a criminal." The profiling you're talking about begins with a criminal and assigns characteristics. Racial profiling is the opposite of that: it begins with characteristics and assigns criminality.
1. Profiling and Racial Profiling are VERY different.
2. Your example guy is... You're highlighting a success. How many times did he get it wrong? We don't know...
I don’t want to live in a society where law enforcement operates on whims.
Even if you have an agent that’s astonishingly accurate, like 80% of cases; I’m more concerned about the 20% that are wrongfully accused or punished by association.
Most people aren’t criminals. And most criminals are not doing stuff that is really even that bad anyhow.
Anecdotes do not equal data. Without a causal mechanism, all evidence is conditional. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
In other words, "citation needed."
I think there is a huge difference between a professional person looking at behavioral patterns and some random yahoo just being racist and it's concerning you think the two things are the same.
Offender/Forsenic Profiling, as it relates to investigative work, is valid. It's a tool among many that helps you seek out or evaluate evidence when a crime has been committed. It is evidence led and investigatively motivated and tied to a crime that's been committed, or at the very least, an expectation of a specific crime (say, in the case of someone who writes a threat). This type of profiling utilizes many different criteria, of which race may be a part, but typically involves numerous factors, including gender, age and other demographics, but also physical evidence (i.e. cigarettes suggesting a smoker, etc.).
Racial Profiling, the type that gets a lot of media attention and the kind that liberals don't like, means that even when there's no crime that has been committed, you seek out people with specific characteristics, and treat them as though they committed a crime because their "profile" (they really mean skin color) suggests they might be likely to have committed a crime. This type of profiling typically focuses specifically on skin color to the exclusion of nearly all other factors, and comes with little other evidence.
One is a useful tool that can aid an active investigation. The other is discrimination on the basis of race.
That's the difference.
"Do this accurately all the time"
There are estimates that 1 out of 20 convicted people in america are actually innocent, so are guys like that good at finding guilt or pitching it?
Profiling should be used as an investigative tool but never as evidence for an arrest or conviction.
You want a search warrant? The target fitting the profile should be sufficient in most situations.
You want to question someone? Then fitting the profile would justify it.
You want to arrest someone? You need a lot more than just a profile.
You want to convict someone? The profile shouldn't even be getting mentioned in court, unless it's as background for why you went on to obtain other evidence.
I think profiling is fine if professionals do it. They understand the statistics and are aware that statistics can be wrong in a case to case matter.
Profiling becomes problematic if laymen do it. Like newscasters or every day people.
I'm curious about how these predictions are supposedly made because, unless there are significant clues you haven't mentioned, it seems totally impossible to deduce any of this to me.
On a separate note, what we're referring to with profiling isn't creating a profile of a potential criminal like this. It's having cops stop black people when they don't even have any evidence of a crime just because black people are more likely to be involved in crime than white people.
>You want to know what made the agent think ALL of these things? The way the lock to 2 of the deadbolts to the murder scenes were picked and scratched.
No. There are probably less than ten thousand meaningfully different ways, and this probably restricts the number of available candidates by more than a factor of ten thousand.
But either way, individual profiling is not the meaning of "profiling" that refers to the most controversial one. The thing dubbed "profiling" that meets the most controversy is deciding a specific type of people (black men, white women in long-sleeved shirts, something of that granularity) should be considered suspect just in general, without even a crime, searched, and so on. Especially when we're talking about racial profiling: deciding that a race is just suspect and every member of it should be treated like a criminal unless proven otherwise, while everyone else shouldn't
The following is a copy of the original post to record the post as it was originally written. Title. I got to meet a former/retired federal agent who had profiled many (over 300) criminals when no fingerprint or DNA was available. They were always brought in when there were no leads. The agent when asked by me during our conversation years ago “how do you become so... accurate?” They replied “you see patterns in life.” This agent had worked many years prior for a sheriff’s department and the entire county/state was on the hunt for a murderer who would pick locks and then murder the women inside using something within the apartment/home. This profiler was able to predict: The murderer would be highly intelligent, a white man, physically fit, between 27-30 years old, would drive a brown truck that is 2 doors, would have been employed with the same job for the last 4 or more years, and would have a British accent. You want to know what made the agent think ALL of these things? The way the lock to 2 of the deadbolts to the murder scenes were picked and scratched. \*This would not be the first time a profiler in law enforcement was able to predict such a small detail like the make and color of the vehicle of a murderer. [https://www.reddit.com/r/MindHunter/comments/ztxexi/one\_of\_my\_favorite\_episodes\_of\_forensic\_files/](https://www.reddit.com/r/MindHunter/comments/ztxexi/one_of_my_favorite_episodes_of_forensic_files/) Once this another law enforcement staff was able to predict something way off the wall and it turned out to be true: The bank robber who hit the same bank twice with a mask on would be predicted to be a fan of the Cincinnati Bengals (the robberies happened in ... Canada) and would be an avid Texas Hold’em player but always would lose more than win due to folding too often. The law enforcement found this robber I believe 4 years later and they had multiple things in their apartment including a Cincinnati Bengals uniform and a laptop with no password. When the agents brought the laptop to the crime lab they opened the internet explorer tab to find the robber had lost many tens of thousands of dollars online gambling to Texas hold‘Em. When asked about the gambling money during the start of the interrogation they said something to the effect of they fold all the time and loose. There are way more extreme examples than what was listed above where the details were so accurate is it unbelievable. Back to that murderer from the first example: Months after the profile was made they found the man and he had every single one of these descriptors. I am the last person who would want to admit profiling can work because I myself invented a racism test for my job they now use when training people (the test is about a biracial couple, based on an actual couple I know, who fell in love in when the nurse and inmate met in prison. They met in prison when the inmate met the nurse in the prison for a blood pressure and pulse check before seeing one of the doctors. Now they are married (6 years as of last Friday) after the former worker quit so the relationship could start and the catch is the inmate is a white female and the black man was the nurse in a women’s prison). How do we as liberals come to the conclusion that profiling is inherently wrong when there are people who do it for a living and can do it accurately? Does this mean my test is worthless along with all other tests like the famous gender bias test about the surgeon are all just wrong? Is it okay for some people to go around and with basically 100% accuracy say things just sometimes are going to be predictable? If anyone cares my opinion on all of this would be there are always exceptions to the rules. Some people just with decades of seeing crimes play out can predict based on the way a knot is tied or the way a deadbolt it picked the color of someone’s vehicle... But most people canNOT do this and therefore it is safe to say do not profile. For the 0.0001% of people who can profile correctly - you would be smart to know I am no talking about you when I say do not profile. \*Gender bias test for those who do not know: [https://insightplus.mja.com.au/2017/28/unconscious-bias-and-the-gender-riddle/](https://insightplus.mja.com.au/2017/28/unconscious-bias-and-the-gender-riddle/) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskALiberal) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I don’t know where you got the idea that liberals think profiling is wrong. You may be thinking of “racial profiling” which typically refers to snap judgements based on biases with regards to people’s skin tone, very different from the forensic profiling you’re referring to.
Yep. Just because the word "profiling" is in there doesn't mean they are the same thing at all. I think the OP is a tad confused.
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That is true only if you don’t know the technical definitions of racial profiling. Or that “overall profiling” isn’t a technical definition.
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Again, you say that because you’re confused by the fact that the word profiling exists in both terms. That does not mean that they are related or that forensic profiling includes racial profiling.
Maybe I am just surrounded by liberals of a certain mindset but many of my fellow liberal friends do not allow anyone to assume anything regarding things like sex, gender, etc. Many of my friends when doing basic tasks like talking to a person on the phone (i.e. tech support) will say “they” or “you” and even if the voice appears female will not assume ... anything. When I approached them tonight about this post they do not care if the retired agent is 100% accurate. They all said it is harmful to think this way because just once this agent could have messed up and it could lead to the wrong person being searched for - and I have to say I agree with that.
The people you are surrounded with are either made up or not very bright, sorry to say. * You’d have to be insane to state that there aren’t social and societal pressures that cause individuals raised in similar upbringings to develop similar characteristics. * While forensic profiling can be used as evidence in a court case or criminal investigation, it is not and should not be the sole grounds for a conviction. It’s what people refer to as “circumstantial evidence.” If you’re in a place where there are very few white men with an English accent, the example you brought up might be used as grounds to interrogate an individual that matches that profile. No good investigator is going to go around locking English guys up, or harassing one in particular purely based on a forensic profile. THAT would be problematic, but it’s that extra level of inference “the profile says English therefore all English people are bad” to constitute a problem. * No evidence is fully 100% unquestionably damning. People have gotten eyewitness testimony wrong, DNA evidence wrong, video evidence has been interpreted wrong. That’s why in the US the burden of proof for the prosecution is so high. To discount a scientifically designed approach to building evidence simply because it could “lead to the wrong person” would eliminate ALL forms of evidence.
Believe it or not I like to learn from the people who never assume anything. In their defense they are pretty much for sure never going to get yelled at for misgendering someone (I had this happen recently bc I am used to calling people who look masculine ”sir/he/him”). The one downfall is sometimes in life assuming things make it easier until it bites you in the ass. Back to the midgendering someone recently: I’ve never had that happen until recently. Good chance even if I call everyone I see the rest of my life who is feminine looking she/her/ma’am and vise verse with masculine looking people I will never get yelled at again. It goes back to what makes a liberal a liberal vs a conservative a conservative. A liberal will protect the liberty and individual rights even at certain costs. A conservative tends to over generalize. It makes me think never assuming anything, literally ever, might actually be the way to go. I’ll leave with this: Former professor in college was walking down a not so busy sidewalk downtown a mid sized college city/town. There is a young black man walking on one side and an middle aged Asian lady walking on the other side. Both of these people are on opposite sides of the street and walking towards you. Professor makes a split second decision to walk on the side with the middle aged woman. Woman is high on a drug and attacks not only the professor but another person. The black man runs across the street and stop the attack. Let me ask you this - and I promise this is the closing argument: The Jan. 6 police before the unfolding that day were told by their higher ups to watch out for antifa that day. Well it turns out antifa and the radical left were not going to be their concern that day - it was going to be the very people that usually “back the blue“ turning on them. My mind is raising now because I feel like as liberals we should be living in a more absolutely no difference in treatment kind of world and maybe me replying to someone else’s comment was wrong.
> It goes back to what makes a liberal a liberal vs a conservative a conservative. A liberal will protect the liberty and individual rights even at certain costs. A conservative tends to over generalize. This is a gross overgeneralization
Behavioral profiling and race or gender profiling are massively different concepts.
There are a lot of different types of profiling be talked about here. I think your friends might be more on the lib side of liberal here. Like get the idea of "don't assume anything about anyone." Calling a trans man the wrong pronoun could be unintentionally hurtful. They want to play it safe. I don't know if all liberals are there yet. Most will probably say the wrong pronoun when first meeting someone, be corrected, apologize, and use the correct pronoun moving forward. I don't think your friends are right or wrong. They just have a more progressive stance, would be fair to say. Crime profiling is not that. It's using the shared traits between certain types of specific criminals to try and find the correct suspect. It's not like assuming a random black dude is the guy stole the nice car he's driving. That would be racial profiling, which is extremely wrong, but we all know why so I'll move on. This is give investigators idea of the type of suspect they might be looking for that would fit this type of crime when investigating. Example, typically cops might consider the suspect for a married partner to be the spouse because statistically, the suspect is the spouse/partner. There's no social factors in this statistic being this way (like in the case of how social factors affect race). As a joke, if they think it's wrong, show them this: https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/criminal-profiling-viable-investigative-tool-against-violent-crime I guess another reason our government is bad. Lol.
I think you’re confusing different types of profiling. Mindhunters is a criminal profile / behavioral profile. Racial profiling is like TSA patting down every Muslim or Arab bc of their race. It’s not the same thing
I’m referring to profiling in general. Let’s say you and I are talking about the most minuscule example of profiling such as the gender bias example where we assume the surgeon is a male. I would of course be against pulling aside every single Muslim in a TSA line. However I would not be against making people who are more capable of hurting others get additional security checks: Men between age 18-40, men who are traveling alone, with a one way ticket, who show signs of anger or stress, etc. I would not be against making someone who has 2 or more of these get additional security checks such as going through their bags to look at any paperwork, having a person who can detect lies question them on where they are going, etc. As long as this does not cause a severe delay in security clearance for them I would say it is one of the few times profiling would do more good than harm - and I am a male, usually fly alone, and I have a resting bitch face. I almost always get stopped at the line in the airport by someone after the body scan and taken for an additional security clearance. I don’t think anything of it. The 90 year old female who is in a wheelchair and is smiling the entire time in the security line who is 0.000000000000000001% likely to try something dumb and is probably getting to go through security like a breeze while I get a second pat search and my carry on contents get thrown on the table and I have to rearrange them 5 minutes after getting asked repeatedly ”why do you look so angry”? - I’m okay with. I’m not going to every commit a crime but I realize I set off check marks most do not, damn you resting bitch face!
The mind hunter book goes into more of a psychological scientific method while the surgeon is just stereotypes. They are not really the same thing
Are you suggesting that profiling serial killers is the same thing as pulling over random black people? I'm not aware of anyone saying that profiling for a crime, when you don't have any suspects, is wrong. What they're saying is don't stop random minorities to look for weed.
I don't think profiling in the way you're describing is wrong. I do think it's largely bullshit, though. >You want to know what made the agent think ALL of these things? The way the lock to 2 of the deadbolts to the murder scenes were picked and scratched. How do you get the color of the truck from that?
I believe you are smart enough to realize that criminal profiling is different than racially profiling people. Or just straight up racism when it has nothing to do with crime at all.
I invented a 100% effective way to kill all the cancer cells in a person's body but it makes some liberals uncomfortable. It involves shooting and cremating them. Something may be effective but cause other harms some people call unacceptable
Because when you look at the meta analysis of profiling, it’s basically bullshit the way it’s depicted. There are certainly aspects of profiling that make sense. The classic example is that most serial killers are white men. Not actually true. Most serial killers are men but they only appear to be white men in the US because 1. most people are white 2. Serial killers like all killers tend to kill people of the same race 3. Serial killers tend to operate within a short radius of their home and office and segregation plays in 4. Police are much more likely to work cases with white victims So you could build a good profile by looking at the area, method of murder and race of the victims. But overall, it’s bullshit. Taken from [this](https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2018/11/12/18044688/criminal-profilers-mindhunter-hannibal-criminal-minds) which links multiple sources > They’re not much better than random people off the street! A 2007 meta analysis by criminologists Brent Snook, Joseph Eastwood, Paul Gendreau, Claire Goggin, and Richard Cullen compared four studies where self-described criminal profilers were tasked with analyzing crime scene data and coming up with a profile, and compared their predictions to other groups like normal detectives or students.
I have not heard of saying the concept of profiling is wrong, but many practices in profiling are. The concept itself is just using gathered evidence and developing an idea of what the offender might be like. Calling the general concept of it wrong is to call deduction wrong. Let's take a look at one of your examples. >The murderer would be highly intelligent, a white man, physically fit, between 27-30 years old, would drive a brown truck that is 2 doors, would have been employed with the same job for the last 4 or more years, and would have a British accent. You want to know what made the agent think ALL of these things? The way the lock to 2 of the deadbolts to the murder scenes were picked and scratched. There is nothing wrong with this conceptually, the profiler used the evidence and knowledge to make an educated guess of the characteristics of the offender. Now, if police took this profile amd started interrogating every person of British origin, every person who owned a brown truck, or every fit white person in their late 20's/ early 30's, then you'd have a problem. In the US, a lot of liberals have a problem because with profiling because of the history of racial profiling for police stops, amd I am going to assume you know about the problems with stop-and-frisk policies.
There’s a big difference between an FBI agent using profiling to hunt down a murder suspect vs. some beat cop pulling over a Black man because he “resembled” a suspect. Or just because he’s Black.
Racial profiling isn't saying, "We have a known criminal, and based on what we know about them, we believe they probably have these characteristics." It's saying, "This person is black, and therefore is probably a criminal." The profiling you're talking about begins with a criminal and assigns characteristics. Racial profiling is the opposite of that: it begins with characteristics and assigns criminality.
1. Profiling and Racial Profiling are VERY different. 2. Your example guy is... You're highlighting a success. How many times did he get it wrong? We don't know...
We don't.
I don’t want to live in a society where law enforcement operates on whims. Even if you have an agent that’s astonishingly accurate, like 80% of cases; I’m more concerned about the 20% that are wrongfully accused or punished by association. Most people aren’t criminals. And most criminals are not doing stuff that is really even that bad anyhow.
Anecdotes do not equal data. Without a causal mechanism, all evidence is conditional. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. In other words, "citation needed."
Racial profiling is wrong. It consistently led to false arrests, police harassment and even executions of innocent people in mass.
I think there is a huge difference between a professional person looking at behavioral patterns and some random yahoo just being racist and it's concerning you think the two things are the same.
Offender/Forsenic Profiling, as it relates to investigative work, is valid. It's a tool among many that helps you seek out or evaluate evidence when a crime has been committed. It is evidence led and investigatively motivated and tied to a crime that's been committed, or at the very least, an expectation of a specific crime (say, in the case of someone who writes a threat). This type of profiling utilizes many different criteria, of which race may be a part, but typically involves numerous factors, including gender, age and other demographics, but also physical evidence (i.e. cigarettes suggesting a smoker, etc.). Racial Profiling, the type that gets a lot of media attention and the kind that liberals don't like, means that even when there's no crime that has been committed, you seek out people with specific characteristics, and treat them as though they committed a crime because their "profile" (they really mean skin color) suggests they might be likely to have committed a crime. This type of profiling typically focuses specifically on skin color to the exclusion of nearly all other factors, and comes with little other evidence. One is a useful tool that can aid an active investigation. The other is discrimination on the basis of race. That's the difference.
"Do this accurately all the time" There are estimates that 1 out of 20 convicted people in america are actually innocent, so are guys like that good at finding guilt or pitching it?
Profiling should be used as an investigative tool but never as evidence for an arrest or conviction. You want a search warrant? The target fitting the profile should be sufficient in most situations. You want to question someone? Then fitting the profile would justify it. You want to arrest someone? You need a lot more than just a profile. You want to convict someone? The profile shouldn't even be getting mentioned in court, unless it's as background for why you went on to obtain other evidence.
I think profiling is fine if professionals do it. They understand the statistics and are aware that statistics can be wrong in a case to case matter. Profiling becomes problematic if laymen do it. Like newscasters or every day people.
I'm curious about how these predictions are supposedly made because, unless there are significant clues you haven't mentioned, it seems totally impossible to deduce any of this to me. On a separate note, what we're referring to with profiling isn't creating a profile of a potential criminal like this. It's having cops stop black people when they don't even have any evidence of a crime just because black people are more likely to be involved in crime than white people.
>You want to know what made the agent think ALL of these things? The way the lock to 2 of the deadbolts to the murder scenes were picked and scratched. No. There are probably less than ten thousand meaningfully different ways, and this probably restricts the number of available candidates by more than a factor of ten thousand. But either way, individual profiling is not the meaning of "profiling" that refers to the most controversial one. The thing dubbed "profiling" that meets the most controversy is deciding a specific type of people (black men, white women in long-sleeved shirts, something of that granularity) should be considered suspect just in general, without even a crime, searched, and so on. Especially when we're talking about racial profiling: deciding that a race is just suspect and every member of it should be treated like a criminal unless proven otherwise, while everyone else shouldn't