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.