Criticism
In order to generate profiles of offenders member of the BAU use a concept known as psychological profiling. Belief in psychological profiling has often been supported by anecdotal evidence describing BAU profiles as a necessary key to solving a crime. A homeless man in North Carolina for example was apprehended after a BAU profile was issued for a case that the local police force had not been able to solve. Although anecdotal evidence such as this abounds in popular media the concept of psychological profiling has not been empirically proven.
In a number of studies professional criminal profilers have been compared to other groups such as students, police officers and clinical psychologists. In order to evaluate these groups each participant was presented with the details of a previously solved crime. The profile written by the participant was then compared to a profile of the guilty party. In no study did the group of profilers outperform the other groups and in some studies they were clearly outperformed by both biology and chemistry students.
Despite these findings, members of the BAU continue to use psychological profiling. Public confidence in psychological profiling is also high and has been greatly promoted by TV shows such as Criminal Minds and Criminal Minds: Suspect Behaviour. Some forensic psychologists, such as Robert Homant, have also dismissed the previously mentioned studies by stating that they lack external validity as they do not truly represent the situations in which member of the BAU work.
Read more about this topic: Behavioral Analysis Unit
Famous quotes containing the word criticism:
“When you overpay small people you frighten them. They know that their merits or activities entitle them to no such sums as they are receiving. As a result their boss soars out of economic into magic significance. He becomes a source of blessings rather than wages. Criticism is sacrilege, doubt is heresy.”
—Ben Hecht (1893–1964)
“The critic lives at second hand. He writes about. The poem, the novel, or the play must be given to him; criticism exists by the grace of other men’s genius. By virtue of style, criticism can itself become literature. But usually this occurs only when the writer is acting as critic of his own work or as outrider to his own poetics, when the criticism of Coleridge is work in progress or that of T.S. Eliot propaganda.”
—George Steiner (b. 1929)
“The greater the decrease in the social significance of an art form, the sharper the distinction between criticism and enjoyment by the public. The conventional is uncritically enjoyed, and the truly new is criticized with aversion.”
—Walter Benjamin (1892–1940)