Current Affairs Journal: Eleventh Entry

Ethical Issue: Offender Profiling

This last post I will publish will have to do with an ethical issue concerning offender profiling. I will try to look at this topic from as many angles as possible without having done any research beforehand.

Imagine you're a forensic psychologist. You just created an offender profile that describes the perpetrator of a crime e.g. a murder. The profile describes the perpetrator to be African American, left-handed, possibly a construction worker and between 20 and 30 years old. This profile helps you narrow down your list of suspects and you end up with ten suspects that all fit the profile. They might not have been linked to the crime in any way before but now they could be suspects. Should you be allowed to arrest them now?

I thought about this for quite some time and decided to ask four of my friends what they think about this. Luckily, all of them answered my texts and I got the following results to the "Should you be allowed to arrest them now?" question: three of them said no, one of them said yes.
If I had to give my opinion, I'd probaby agree with the three people that said yes. I don't think that it is possible to simply arrest someone just because it is assumed that he or she could have committed a crime. You need evidence or reasonable suspicions to arrest someone. .And, to my mind, an offender profile can not be considered "evidence". Offender profiling is not even used in court yet because it is a very controversial technique. A perfect example for that would be the case of the two "Beltway Snipers", whose offender profile was completely inaccurate.
And in some way arresting ten people without any evidence also seems a bit ridiculous. What if the offender profile was much more vague and you could find 50 possible suspects? Would you arrest them all and keep them in custody until you have questioned each and every one of them? I think the government would refuse to provide money needed for imprisoning suspects, even if just for a short while.

But why did one of my friends say yes? Well, I understand and kind of share her opinion in some way. Knowing that this person might have killed someone makes you feel scared. Having him arrested and questioned can help find the real perpetrator. And having no evidence is no real problem either because questioning the person could help find possible proof or evidence. It would do more good  than harm, wouldn't it ? The suspect just has to sit through one or more questionings and that's it. This would help the police immensely and maybe they might even be right and one of their suspects is the perpetrator.

Still, I think that the fact that he or she "might be" the perpetrator is not enough to have this person arrested. Of course, if you look for someone with the help of a offender profile you look for any random person. But to arrest this person you must somehow find a connection between him/her and the committed crime. If we were to arrest people just because they fit the profile, they would feel like their human rights are violated (which is the truth),which would lead to paranoia and mistrust on the citizens' side.

Current Affairs Journal: Tenth Entry

ETHICAL ISSUE: DNA DATABASES

Imagine this scenario: Someone is killed in your home town and extensive research is done to find the perpetrator. There is no match found for the fingerprints or DNA collected at the crime scene and there is no possible suspect that could be charged, no DNA that could be used to compare the evidence to. The next thing that'll happen is something all of you can probably imagine: the case will became a “cold case”.

Now what if we (let’s speak about Austria ) had a DNA database that stores DNA samples from every single person living in this country. Of course, Austria does have a DNA databases but, according to the country’s regulations,  DNA samples are only taken from people that were convicted or are suspected to have committed a recordable offence. But what if a country was to decide to create a database that holds DNA fingerprints of every person living in that country? 

Let’s take a step back and look at DNA databases in general. Currently about 60 countries in the world have a DNA database and 34 more are currently in the process of establishing one. The regulations that state which people need to provide a sample differ from country to country. Like I already mentioned above, in Austria only people that are convicted offenders and suspects of serious offences are concerned. In the UK, though, samples are also collected from people that get arrested for any recordable offence. For that the database has grown to hold more than 329,660 crime scene DNA profiles and 5,093,145 individuals' profiles. In comparison, the Austrian database only holds 32,000 crime scene DNA profiles and 117,150 individuals' profiles. (Interpol survey report from 2008)

Now to get back on track: If we were to create a database that holds samples of every citizen of one country, we could compare any kind of genetic material found at a crime scene with the genetical fingerprint of every person living in this country. If we think about our imagined scenario again, wouldn’t this kind of database make it considerably easier to find our murderer?

Like always, though, there are some drawbacks and ethical issues to this idea. If it weren’t so, wouldn’t we already have an e.g. “Austrian DNA fingerprint database” and wouldn’t have to talk about it in theoretical terms?

The first drawback, a minor one I think, is the cost. If we really were to create this database, a great deal of money would have to be invested in both equipment and personnel. The money needed for analyzing (so the equipment that analyses) would be not such a huge problem, I think. Modern technology makes it less time-consuming and less expensive. But like I mentioned, equipment has to be bought and personnel has to be paid. So would it be worth it to get samples from every human being if the cost is that high? Or should you maybe just collect if from people living in areas with very high crime rates?

The second drawback is the violation of rights. As a human being living in our western society we have a couple of rights we might not be aware of. Such of these would be the right to privacy, t the right not to declare, the presumption of innocence, the right to health,.... If everybody were to provide samples for a database, some of these rights would be violated, which is why creating such a database would have to result in changes in the law as well. 

The following laws would make the situation difficult:
- The right of privacy: don’t think about privacy as being “ a space” but as being the choice of not wanting to share some information with somebody else. In a DNA databases you’d “share” your DNA with somebody. To identify someone, though, only certain markers in the DNA are needed. So if there was a regulation that says that only these markers are allowed to be stored, I guess we’d be fine. Some databases in Austria or the UK, though, store the DNA sample as a whole (not only the markers!). This would require the sample to be kept absolutely safe because it should not get in the hands of e.g. marketing companies. Although, if it would be used to conduct medical research for diseases (not cloning or anything like that!), I’d probably not mind. Progress in medicine wouldn’t be a bad side effect.
-The right to dignity:  That’s not really problem I think. Both personnel and conditions should be professional and only if that weren’t the case, it’d be a violation of this specific right.
-The right to physical integrity: Not really, otherwise you can probably not go to a doctor anymore. But if you think about donating other things like e.g. stem cells. Imagine these were to be stored and used to create tissue like new skin. Would you like your cells to be given to someone that got severe burns when he set a building on fire and consequently killed three people? Or is it not your right to “play god”? Just a little something to think about...
-The right to health: Again: samples taken by trained personnel. No harm should be done.
- The right not to declare and the presumption of innocence: Giving a sample wouldn't be a declaration of guilt.
- The right of freedom: This is probably the one right that creates the most problems. This right has two specific meanings: Firstly, it prevents someone to force someone else to do something. Secondly, it also gives you the right to “freedom of movement”. If you think about it, both of these rights would be violated if you had to provide a DNA sample.

Here are some other things I thought of while I was writing this post:
-How is e.g. the Austrian database supposed to find a perpetrator if he or she might not be Austrian? International collaboration would be necessary but would all countries agree on the same terms? How do we know the DNA samples are not used for other purposes?
- How about people that live in a country illegally? Which country is responsible for taking samples from them? And can we simply do that if they are no citizens of this country?
-Fear is also a very difficult issue: people know that also forensic scientists can make mistakes. Now that their DNA is stored on a database who knows when the first police officer will come and knock on their door?

I think that in general a complete DNA database of a country would have enormous advantages. If we set possible economic problems aside it'd be a quite good idea. But like I said, collaboration between more countries would make it even more useful. But will all countries collaborate? Will some insist on being allowed to use the DNA otherwise for research or e.g. cloning.And if it were to be really created, fear and paranoia would spread in the country. What if someone arrests us and we didn't do anything. Forensic sciences have their flaws as well, like anything else in this world.

Current Affairs Journal: Ninth Entry

Listen up guys, there is news in the world of forensic sciences. The future we talk about all the time might already be just around the corner, ready to arrive. A new, seemingly revolutionary, lie detector has been developed. In comparison to the old polygraph it is supposed to work much more accurately because it does not use your physical response, but the blood flow to your brain to prove that you're being dishonest. But let's not get our hopes up yet and look at all the facts first.

Now, first things first. What is a polygraph?? Some of you might have already heard about this machine. Still, for those who are unfamiliar with this term, I am going to explain to you what it is I am talking about.
A polygraph is basically a lie detector. By attaching between four and six sensor to a subject's body, he/she is monitored so the examiner can look at the persons vitals, which is important for the next step. The examiner asks the subject some "control questions". These questions are chosen to include questions that the subject might lie about to seem honest. If the subject really lies to a question like "Have you  ever lied to get out of a difficult situation" the examiner should be able to see the lie by a change in your body functions (perspiration, breathing rate, pulse and blood pressure).When the examiner starts asking the questions that are really important it should become apparent if the subject tells a lie or not. By comparing your physiological responses to lying with your usual vitals the subject should be caught lying. Well...should be...

If you start your research on the polygraph, you actually find more pages on how to cheat a polygraph test than pages that simply tell you how a polygraph works. I think this fact is already prove enough to convince someone that this machine is not very reliable at what it does.

The following things are very common among the different things people suggest to do to cheat a polygraph test.

- Cause yourself pain by e.g. twisting your finger or biting your tongue. By doing that WHEN YOU'RE ASKED A CONTROL QUESTION, your body functions change and a truthful answer will seem like a lie. How are people supposed to know if you're lying about relevant questions if  truthful answers to control questions appear to be wrong.
- Change your breathing pattern. This might be a more difficult step to take (for me, at least). When you're asked a control question, change your breathing pattern. Hold your breath, breathe faster or slower. This will change your pulse or even cause you to sweat. Only do it for a couple of seconds  ,though, and then change back to your usual breathing pattern. If the examiner switches to asking relevant questions, control your breathing. Be calm and don't try to breathe too deeply. "A breathing rate of 15-30 breaths per minute" should be maintained but I seriously doubt that trying to remember that or trying to do it doesn't stress you (which will, then again, show on the graph).
If you think changing your breathing pattern would be too obvious, try thinking about something scary or stressful ..and hope that it'll work.


Clearly, a polygraph is not yet the kind of technology forensic scientists might be hoping for. Recently, though, one new method has claimed to be able to identify lies with a success rate of 90% (some sources claim 97%). This new method is called fmRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) which, as opposed to the polygraph, tries to identify lies by looking at your brain. Researchers claim that if an individual is being dishonest, some regions of his/her brain need more oxygenated blood than usual. Lying is a decision that the individual makes and for that reason the part of the brain that is responsible for decisions (prefrontal cortex) should get more blood. A fmRI scan should show this increased blood flow to the brain.

Sounds pretty damn convincing, right? Well, apparently there are still some things that most of us overlook, like the following: the people tested so far have been healthy individuals only. What if someone takes drugs that affect their blood pressure? What about people that have a blockage in an artery? And in fact, there has been some research done that showed that increased activity in the prefrontal cortex may actually represent truth-telling.Okay, now I  guess we can all see why it has not yet been allowed to use fmRI in court. To my mind, that is a good thing. Just think about the polygraph. We can't use some technology that is not yet fully developed. The risk we'd take is just too big.

Well then, sorry to disappoint you all. It seems like we will have to wait a little longer for someone to create or perfect a lie detector with a success rate of 99.9999 %.

Current Affairs Journal: Eighth Entry

My last post about criminal profiling made me think about something sci-fi-related. If any of you have ever seen an episode of Sherlock (or maybe even the movies, which I actually haven’t seen) you have seen that he has his trademark habit of deducing facts from looking at people, places, situations or whatnot. So I started wondering if Sherlock himself maybe uses offender profiling of some sort to make his deductions. This post here presents the result of my research on what tools Sherlock uses to draw his deductions.

The first thing I came across is this huge debate whether Sherlock uses deductive or inductive reasoning for his deductions? As it seems Arthur Conan Doyle himself described Sherlock as someone who uses deductive reasoning (seems logical if it’s “deductions” that Sherlock draws). It is suggested from more sources than one, though, that even in the books Sherlock used inductive reasoning or both deductive and inductive reasoning.

Now, first things first: What is inductive/deductive reasoning?

Deductive reasoning (top-down logic) consists of four logical steps that need to be taken to come to a conclusion: Theory-hypothesis-observation-confirmation. You start with a theory about something you are interested in. Then you find a hypothesis for this theory which can be tested using different observations. This way, you can see if your theory is right. An easy example for this would be the following thing I found on the internet.

“Since all humans are mortal, and I am a human, then I am mortal.”
“All numbers ending in 0 or 5 are divisible by 5. The number 35 ends with a 5, so it is divisible by 5.”
(Hypothesis – Observation – Confirmation)

What deductive reasoning is all about therefore, is coming from a broader theory to a specific conclusion and to find out whether it is true or not. In other words: “drawing logical conclusions” or “from general to specific”. It is important to mention, though, that these logical conclusions are only valid if the initial theory and the argument itself is correct. If it isn’t, the result can’t be correct either.

Inductive reasoning is the opposite of deductive reasoning. It is also called “Bottum-up logic” and works like this: You move from “specific observations” to “broader generalizations”. Your conclusion depends entirely on your interpretation, though, which means an inductive argument can  be wrong. Your inductive argument is actually just a good guess. An example for inductive reasoning would be the following:

• Every tornado I have ever seen in the United States rotated counterclockwise, and I have seen dozens of them. (specific observation)
• We see a tornado in the distance, and we are in the United States.
• I conclude that the tornado we see right now must be rotating counter clockwise.(broader generalisation)

Now we know that what Sherlock Holmes does in the books, films or movies is reasoning backwards. If we look at certain clips of Sherlock Holmes movies or scenes from the TV show you can see and have a look yourself. What do you think it is that he does? Inductive or deductive reasoning?? I personally believe it is inductive reasoning but I might be wrong. This topic still makes my head spin ‘cause it is reaaally really confusing. But just try and take a guess yourself!

Sherlock deducing John Watson

Now last but not least, is inductive/deductive reasoning just something that occurs in science fiction or is it also used by forensic scientists? Now this is where this text connects with the beginning of the post: inductive/deductive reasoning is used in criminal profiling (not exclusively in offender profiling, though!). Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories about Sherlock Holmes are actually even used to teach inductive/deductive reasoning for different criminal justice professions.^^ 

Well after such a long post everything that is left to say is the following: Fact 1, Fiction 0.

Current Affairs Journal: Seventh Entry

Have you ever seen a crime TV show (e.g. "Criminal minds") where one of the main characters, some CSI agent, cleverly predicts what some criminal’s next step will be? If so, you’ve already been acquainted with the concept of “Criminal Profiling”. So far most of you, as did I, might have believed that this is some nonsense writers came up with. But I can tell you: offender profiling is absolutely real!

Criminal profiling, more commonly known as offender profiling, is based on the belief that you can find out something about a perpetrator’s character by looking at their crimes. More specifically, you look at the crime they committed e.g. a murder as well as the crime scene and the victim itself. Of course creating an offender profile can’t tell you who the offender is. What it can in fact do is the following: a criminal profile gives you suggestions about what the psychological characteristics of the perpetrator might be. Having this kind of information helps narrow down a list of suspects and in consequence makes it a lot easier to find the offender.

After looking a little deeper into the world of offender profiling I found out that the (presumably) very first offender profile was already created in 1888. A surgeon called Thomas Bond wrote an offender profile about an unknown murderer. Today as well as in 1888 nobody knew who that man was but he became known to the whole world as “Jack the Ripper”. If we look at what Bond wrote, we’ll see that there is a lot of information in it that current offender profiles also need to include.

“The murderer in external appearance is quite likely to be a quiet inoffensive looking man probably middle-aged and neatly and respectably dressed. […]It is of course possible that the Homicidal impulse may have developed from a revengeful or brooding condition of mind…[…]He would be solitary and eccentric in his habits, also he is likely to be a man without regular occupation, but with some small income or pension. […]”

Thomas Bond was followed by many notable profilers, one of the most famous ones being Dr. James Brussel and David Canter. Literature, though, was one of the first means of communications that talked about offender profiling AT ALL (even before Bond!). In their books, Edgar Allan Poe and most notably Arthur Conan Doyle (the creator of SHERLOCK HOLMES) used criminal profiling very similar to offender profiling that exists today. 

The different existing approaches for offender profiling were created by Peter B. Ainsworth. According to Ainsworth there are four approaches: these are the geographical approach, the investigative psychology, the typological approach and the clinical approach. The first approach, the geographical approach, looks at where and when the crimes took place and might help to find out where the offender lives or works, using this information. The second approach tries to look at the “style of offense” , so how the perpetrator committed his crime. Psychological theories are used to find out possible characteristics of the offender. The third approach talks about getting a closer look of the crime scene. The criminal profiler tries to find certain characteristics of the crime scene to then match these “typical characteristics” to other possible offences. The last approach (clinical approach) tries to determine the mental state of the offender.

When creating an offender profile criminal profilers take five different steps.

1. Crime scene and physical evidence is analysed
2. Nature of the crime is analysed, Which type of crime is it?
3. Background of the victim used to find possible motives, reconstruction of the crime,
4. Offender profile is created and compared with suspects

5. investigation

Today offender profiles are created for all different kinds of crimes. These include serial sexual murder,sexual offenses, arson, organized crime, terrorism and cybercrime. In the past offender profiles were only created for sexual offenses and serial killings.
Most criminal profilers are psychologists or forensic psychologists but many aren't, which is why the validity of offender profiling is questioned very often. Not only the training requirements but also false positives and false negatives resulted in criminal profiling being doubted more often. A very good example for the invalidity of criminal profiling would be the case of the "Beltway Snipers". In the picture below you can see what kind of person the offender profile of this particular case describes and who the real offenders turned out to be.

Well then, now it's your turn! Make up your mind about criminal profiling. What do you think? Is it helpful? Is the room for mistakes too big a risk?

Instant Photography

Instant photography was born 67 years ago and has ever since remained one of the few milestones of photography that still attracts customers to the day.  Even though technology has advanced a great deal, instant cameras still function with the same chemical reactions that were used in the first instant camera developed in 1947. In an instant camera, a colour film is enclosed in a light tight part of the camera. This plastic film consists of three light sensitive layers, sensitive to the colours blue, green and red. In between each of these layers there is a dye developer, which will later turn the photons into metallic silver. Two more very important layers, the light-sensitive layer and the image layer, are located just above the different light sensitive and dye layers. If you take a picture with an instant camera, light hits the light-sensitive layer (covered in silver particles) of the colour film and causes a chemical reaction. A reagent, a mix of opacifiers (light blockers), alkali and white pigment, then starts off the developing process of the picture. While the picture is being passed out of the camera the reagent is spread over the topmost layer, the light sensitive layer. The different chemicals in the reagent slowly make their way downwards through the different layers (light sensitive layers as well as dye layers). In the light sensitive layers, the photons are turned into metallic silver particles by the reagent. After all of the developer dye has been dissolved, the silver particles can move up to the image layer now that the colours are all fully developed. Which of the colours are developed depends on which of the three light sensitive layers has remained unexposed. At this point, the picture is fully developed but it cannot yet be seen. This last step, the reaction of the acid layer with the opacifiers, results in the opacifiers clearing up. Now, after only a couple of minutes, the picture can be discerned.

Current Affairs Journal: Sixth Entry

Just recently I have uncovered another misbelief about forensic sciences. I guess all of you, like me, thought that fingerprints are foolproof and that there is no chance that fingerprints can belong to more than one person? Well, at least half of that statement is wrong. Fingerprints can indeed only belong to one person and one person only. Even identical twins don’t have matching fingerprints. But in forensic sciences, using fingerprints as identification has been doubted and questioned recently. The reason for that is (even though fingerprinting is considered highly reliable) that the methods of comparing fingerprints is „lacking objective standards“.
When fingerprints are analysed  there are two  certain aspects which are observed to distinguish the prints: Friction ridge patterns and minutiae points. The main focus in a forensic analysis lies on the minutiae points. The three patterns that can be found in any fingerprint are loops, arches and whorls. With a rate of 60%, the loop is the most commonly found pattern of the three. Minutiae points are certain features of the ridges on your fingers. About 9 different minutiae points can be distinguished and among these, the most common ones a bifurcation, a short ridge or a ridge ending. 

Now according to these points, fingerprints are compared. In order to be able to match a fingerprint to another fingerprint, a certain number of minutiae points must be matched. And this is where the problem lies: There is no fixed number of matched minutiae points, which makes a match a valid match. How do we know that a match of 5 minutiae points is a “real” match? And if you have two people that share the same 5 minutiae points, how likely is it that something like that occurs?
 The decision is entirely up to the examiner! Experts often declare something a match with about 12 or 20 matched minutiae points. Still, like I already mentioned previously, most of the time the decision is up to the examiner or the individual standards of the different labs.

Also, there are some flaws to the system that searches for matching fingerprints. A false positive, a fingerprint match which turns about to be “false”, and a false negative can still create an invalid evidence. A study conducted by Bradford T. Ulery, R. Austin Hicklin, JoAnn Buscaglia and Maria Antonia Robert, though, showed that only about 0.1% of all the examined latent prints in their study turned out to be a false positive. False negatives ( a print which is said not to be a match but actually is) are much more common with a rate of 7.5%. Even though the rate for both false negatives and false positives is quite low the number of errors that could, or do occur, is still immense.