South Africa: How Thinking About Murderers As Hunters Could Help the Police

analysis

Psychological profiling, also called criminal personality assessment, is a useful weapon in the armoury of an investigator trying to solve a crime. It's a process that involves what Richard Kocsis, a forensic psychologist and criminologist, describes as collecting "leads and biological sketches of behavioural patterns, trends and tendencies".

By interpreting certain types of evidence at a crime scene investigators can, as experts have explained, receive information about "the kind of person who is capable of committing it, allowing for leads to be pursued even if there is a lack of the actual identity of the offender".

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