Abstract
M.A. (Clinical Psychology)
Criminological trends indicate that there is a move in the direction of sexual, violent
sexual, and motiveless violent offenses in society. One of the aspects of psychological
involvement in combating crime is profiling, where the scene of crime is analyzed to
provide the investigating officer with an indication of the personality type of the person who may have been involved in committing the crimes. An overview of the literature indicates that the profiling of serial crimes takes place according to a certain process, involving an analysis of the physical evidence from the scene of the crime, the use of decision-making process models and crime appraisal, and the eventual compilation of a profile.
The problem that has been investigated involves the dynamics of profiling in the South
African Police Service using registered psychologists who do not have experience in
the process, do not know how accurate the compiled profile is nor how the information at their disposal has been used to reach certain conclusions regarding the biographical details of the offender. A qualitative approach was followed in this investigation. The research participants were expected to scrutinise a case study of a real murder, and to generate hypotheses regarding certain biographical characteristics of the offender who was unknown to them. These data were collected by means of a structured questionnaire which was evaluated and interpreted in a qualitative manner. In general, the research participants were able to reach conclusions about the personality profile of the unknown offender. Consensus was reached without the participants discussing the results which suggests that the training of psychologists provides valuable insights and skills which enable them to perform the profiling task with a considerable degree of accuracy.