Bryanna Fox

Criminal Investigation presents criminal investigation as a science rather than an art. It is widely recognized as the most accurate and comprehensive text in the field. This practical step-by-step introduction to criminal investigation gives students a logical framework for understanding the investigative process. Major sections cover issues such as environmental crime, arrest and search warrants, videotaping of crime scenes, the changing nature of the terrorist threat and drugs.

Offender profiling is an investigative tool used to narrow down the range of potential suspects for a crime by predicting the personality, behavioral, and demographic characteristics that an offender is likely to possess, based upon information collected at the crime scene. While offender profiling has been popularized by TV shows and movies such as Criminal Minds, Silence of the Lambs, and Mindhunter, the real-world impact of offender profiling is largely unknown. This book discusses the history of offender profiling, summarizes research on offender profiling methods, and reviews offender profiling evaluations of accuracy and applied impact. This book also describes a promising new offender profiling methodology called evidence-based offender profiling. This new method relies upon empirical data and scientific methods to develop, evaluate, and replicate offender profiles, thereby increasing offender profiling’s accuracy and utility for active police investigations. It uses prior information about statistical regularities between types of offenders and types of offenses to predict the characteristics of offenders in unsolved cases. A discussion of the future of offender profiling research and implications for law enforcement is also included. This book also explains how practitioners can benefit from the use of empirically tested and validated profiles in their unsolved investigations and how the use, continued research, and evaluation of evidence-based offender profiling can advance the quality, prestige, and utility of the field of offender profiling.

Offender profiling is an investigative tool used to narrow down the range of potential suspects for a crime by predicting the personality, behavioral, and demographic characteristics that an offender is likely to possess, based upon information collected at the crime scene. While offender profiling has been popularized by TV shows and movies such as Criminal Minds, Silence of the Lambs, and Mindhunter, the real-world impact of offender profiling is largely unknown. This book discusses the history of offender profiling, summarizes research on offender profiling methods, and reviews offender profiling evaluations of accuracy and applied impact. This book also describes a promising new offender profiling methodology called evidence-based offender profiling. This new method relies upon empirical data and scientific methods to develop, evaluate, and replicate offender profiles, thereby increasing offender profiling’s accuracy and utility for active police investigations. It uses prior information about statistical regularities between types of offenders and types of offenses to predict the characteristics of offenders in unsolved cases. A discussion of the future of offender profiling research and implications for law enforcement is also included. This book also explains how practitioners can benefit from the use of empirically tested and validated profiles in their unsolved investigations and how the use, continued research, and evaluation of evidence-based offender profiling can advance the quality, prestige, and utility of the field of offender profiling.

? This Brief examines the “militarization” of law enforcement in the United States through the lens of the stakeholders primarily responsible for implementing, funding, and enacting the practice. Largely a result of policies such as the war on drugs, war on terror, and the 1033 program, there has been a gradual but dramatic rise in the use of military-grade weapons, equipment, and tactics used by police agencies across the United States. This Brief examines the level of support for various aspects of police militarization by lawmakers, police executives, and local police officers, and how their opinions may differ based upon their current position or demographic features using a series of analyses and propensity score matching techniques. This Brief also provides an overview of some of the key policy changes responsible for police militarization, and provides insights into the views held by policymakers and law enforcement on various aspects of the practice. The results indicate that while many responsible for this shift are in favor of paramilitary procurement programs, there are differing opinions on key issues such as oversight and use of military-grade weapons, equipment and paramilitary tactics. This work will be of interest to researchers in criminology and criminal justice, particularly those with an interest in policing studies, as well as related fields such as public policy, public administration, emergency management, and sociology.