14
them behind. But they tremble and change and can‟t always be obvious where they come from. If they are
“fixated” and interpreted they can signify what type of person should be looked for”.
14
The offender profiling should differ from the psychological evaluation in the domain of the forensic
psychology of an already known suspect, about which we talked in the first part of this paper. Unlike this
kind of profiling that involves observation of an already known suspect, the criminal profiling is a process of
searching the crime scene and gathering all information so that certain actions and behavior of the offender
during the crime can be retrospectively interpreted and then create an image, description of the person that
manifested that kind of actions. “The process of coming to conclusions about the main characteristics or
traits of the person based on a restricted amount of information has its roots in the psychological testing in
psychometrics, a branch of psychology that existed long before the formation of FBI and before they
ascribed the “monopoly” for the concept of criminal profiling to themselves”.
15
David Canter, professor of psychology at the University of Liverpool, director of the International
Center for Investigative Psychology at the University of Huddersfield and president of the International
Academy for investigative psychology, in the past 20 years has been supporter for the development of one
discipline, a branch of the applied psychology, the investigative psychology whose purpose is to apply the
skills of the domain of criminal activities psychology, law offenders psychology as support for the
police and
the court in solving crimes. He talks about the investigative psychology, instead about the criminal profiling.
“The investigative psychology contains more than just creating profiles of unknown serial killers. It offers
frames of knowledge from different psychological aspects of the human behavior in the frames of the legal
system and, during police and court investigations. The investigative psychology goes further in
applying the
knowledge for the human behavior and refers to all forms of criminal behavior and is of interest to the
police. It is also applied in cases that require investigations in which, apart from the police, other agencies
are involved responsible for preventing and discovering law offences, such as cases of terrorism, insurance
fraud,
committing arson,
tax evasion, smuggling and forbidden commerce”.
16
The theoretic base of the profiling lies in the knowledge that the law offence and the offender are
mutually linked in a specific, direct or indirect way. Two key elements which are a starting point of the
profiling and which are a foundation for the making of the unknown offender profile are the way of
committing the crime – MO (Modus Operandi) and the offender‟s behavior. The profiling is based on the
premise that the manner of committing the crime points to the criminal and the characteristics of the crime
scene can show the type of person that committed the offence. The principle that is a starting point at this
method is that the behavior mirrors the person and their motive.
5.
PENOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY
The penological psychology studies the behavior of the convicts and the process of adaptation in the
penitentiary institutions, and later, during the penological treatment, personality characteristics of the
convicts, psychosocial grounds of the prison and the psychological consequences of the stay of the convicts
and employees in the penitentiary”.
17
The main purpose of the penological treatment is change of the
inmates‟ behavior, i.e. stopping him to commit crime and psychology plays an important role in that because
starting from the learning theory it offers grounds for creating different models of treatment. Also,
psychology is expected to contribute in alleviating stressful situations in the penitentiary and to offer ways
for better coping.
The modern approach towards the treatment of the convicts indicates that the efforts for stopping the
crime who ignore, reject or are unaware of the psychology of human behavior, in most cases do not succeed
in their purpose. The psychology of human behavior plays an important role in the effectiveness of the
punishment and the effectiveness of the human, society and clinical services. In addition, the value of the
appropriate use of the principles of justice, laws and wider social sciences is not negated, however, sticking
exclusively to those principles showed that if those principles are not used in proportion with practically
examined psychological principles for influence and change of the behavior, does not lead to crime
prevention.
14
Canter, D.,
Criminal Shadows: Inside the mind of the serial killer, 12 (1994), taken from Norbert E., The use of offender profiling
evidence in criminal cases, Doctor Dissertation, Golden Gate
University School of Law, San Francisco, California, 2007
15
Canter, D.,
Offender Profiling and Criminal Differentiation, Centre for Investigative Psychology, Department of Psychology,
University of Liverpool, Liverpool, 2000
16
Ibid
17
Mejovshek M.:
Introduction in the penological psychology, Educational – rehabilitative faculty, Naklada Slap, Zagreb 2001