What may be causing this?
Behavioral Evidence Analysis: Goals and Purpose Perhaps the most common misconception about criminal profiling is that its main purpose is to achieve a static, inflexible result, not unlike a clinical diagnosis. The result is then presumably applied to a crime or series of crimes and can then be used to suggest precisely whodunit. This is evidenced by the persistent yet inaccurate belief that there is an average psychological or behavioral pattern or profile that describes a typical serial murderer, a typical rapist, or even a typical crime scene. This clinical view of profiling regards clusters of offender behavior, and subsequent penal classifications, as potential mental health disorders that can be diagnosed for the purposes of recommending treatment or delineating cause. It is a highly desirable position to take if one is a mental health practitioner. However, the goals of offender assessment and treatment are unrelated to the goals of criminal profiling. Clinicians have treatment goals—profilers have explicit investigative and forensic goals. Humans learn, change, and grow. Humans are also affected by time, place, and each other. Therefore a deductively rendered criminal profile cannot be regarded as a static, fixed result that will hold true for all time. It must evolve and must become more refined as it is checked against new evidence and related cases over time. That is to say, when a new offense is committed, when a new attack occurs or a new body is located, and when new evidence is collected and analyzed, the integrity of the criminal profile must be reassessed.
A deductively rendered profile learns. New information is not used to support the old profile, or to pigeonhole the offender, or to rationalize investigative assumptions. It is used to make a more complete and more accurate profile of the offender responsible for the crime(s) at hand.
Behavioral evidence analysis, therefore, should be viewed not as a process aimed at a fixed result, but as an ongoing, dynamic, critical, analytical process that examines offender behavior as it changes over time. It is a criminological effort, not a clinical one. The first responsibility of the criminal profiler, as opposed to the treatment-oriented clinician, is fact finding in a criminal investigation for the purpose of serving justice.
Note: It is worth noting that the process of criminal investigation starts from the moment that law enforcement responds to a crime scene, and does not end until that case is completely out of the criminal justice system. For some cases, especially those involving homicide, this may never happen. It must also be noted that there are criminal investigators working hard for both sides of the courtroom in any legal proceedings, civil or criminal.
The profiler serves the justice system. The clinician serves the client/patient. This is an important difference in terms of ethical obligations when considering the potential goals and purposes of behavioral evidence analysis.
With that onus in mind, a criminal investigation of any kind should start with the assumption that every human on the planet is a suspect. That is to say, the suspect set is universal. One of the purposes of BEA is to assist an investigation, at any phase, in moving from that universal set of suspect characteristics to a more discrete set of suspect characteristics. It cannot typically point to a specific person, or individuate one suspect from all others. It can, however, give insight into the general characteristics of the offender(s) responsible. This type of insight can be used to educate an investigative effort, as well as attorneys, judges, and juries in a forensic context (e.g., criminal proceedings, civil proceedings, and public hearings). Behavioral Evidence Analysis: Contexts Behavioral evidence analysis has two separate but equal contexts, divided not by the method that is employed to arrive at conclusions, but rather by their divergent goals and priorities. Goals and priorities are dictated by a necessity that is dependent upon when, in a given case, a profiler’s skills are requested. The two time frames typically include the investigative phase, before a suspect has been arrested (or before a defendant is taken to court with a lawsuit), and and the trial phase, while a suspect is being tried for a crime (or put on trial for damages). The investigative phase of a criminal case gets a lot of the media attention and is the primary focus of popular fiction on the subject of criminal profiling. When we think of a criminal profiler, we have been conditioned to think of unsolved serial murder cases, and of remote locations where teams of forensic scientists work to recover decaying human remains. Profilers are often characterized as being socially alienated individuals, deeply troubled by their own selfless insights into the minds of the unknown offenders that they are hunting.
This view presented by fiction and the media not only is completely skewed but also is only the first half of the equation.
The trial phase is the second half of the equation, and has received much less explicit attention not only in the media but in the published literature. Although it is equally important, it often lacks the romance and drama associated with high-profile serial cases, making it less marketable.
Investigative Phase The investigative phase involves behavioral evidence analysis of the patterns of unknown perpetrators of known crimes. Criminal profilers tend to be called in to extremely violent, sexual and/or predatory cases when witness testimony, confessions, and/or physical evidence have not been enough to move the investigation forward. The decision to call a profiler into an investigation is typically reactive, with agencies waiting months or even years (if at all) due to a lack of access to a profiler, or to a lack of understanding of what criminal profiling is and how it can aid an investigation.
Primary Goals
-Evaluating the nature and value of forensic and behavioral evidence in a particular crime or series of related crimes; - Reducing the viable suspect pool in a criminal investigation; - Prioritizing the investigation into remaining suspects; - Linkage of potentially related crimes by identifying crime scene indicators and behavior patterns (i.e., modus operandi and signature); - Assessment of the potential for escalation of nuisance criminal behavior to more serious or more violent crimes (i.e., harassment, stalking, voyeurism); - Providing investigators with investigatively relevant leads and strategies; - Helping keep the overall investigation on track and undistracted by offering fresh and unbiased insights; - Developing communication, interview, or interrogation strategies when dealing with suspects Trial Phase The trial phase of criminal profiling involves behavioral evidence analysis of known crimes for which there is a suspect or a defendant (sometimes a convicted defendant). It takes place in the preparation for hearings, trials, and post-conviction proceedings. Guilt, penalty, and appeal phases of trial are all appropriate times to use profiling techniques, depending on the evidence at issue. - Evaluating the nature and value of forensic and behavioral evidence to a particular crime or series of related crimes; - Helping to develop insight into offender fantasy and motivations; - Developing insight into offender motive and intent before, during, and after the commission of a crime (i.e., levels of planning, evidence of remorse, precautionary acts, etc.); - Linkage of potentially related crimes by identifying crime scene indicators and behavior patterns (i.e., modus operandi and signature)
Brent E. Turvey, MS - Forensic Science; PhD - Criminology
Author of:Turvey, B. (2011) Criminal Profiling, 4th Ed., London: Elsevier Science Turvey B. (2013) Forensic Fraud, San Diego: Elsevier Science http://forensicfraud.blogspot.com Savino, J. & Turvey, B. (2011) Rape Investigation Handbook, 2nd Ed., San Diego: Elsevier Science http://forensicvictimology.blogspot.com/ Helpful Links
We just need you to confirm that you are a person and not a robot.
By Zainab Fazal, M.ADS, BCBA
bSci21 Contributing Writer
On June 22, 2015, I received a phone call from a staff at a local residential home serving adults with developmental disabilities. With a lot of excitement, she asked if I watched NBC Dateline the night before. Before I could answer, in even more excitement, she said, “that guy did that strategy you were talking about in class!”
Let me give you a little insight into what she was talking about. She was referring to the segment on NBC Dateline called “My kid would never do that: gun safety”, and the guy was Dr. Raymond Miltenberger.You can check out the segment here.
If you teach anyone, anything, behavior analysis has a secret to share with you. It’s the strategy the staff was talking about – Behavior Skills Training (BST). It is a method to teach students, staff, parents, and anyone else you are teaching a new skill. Dr. Miltenberger defines BST as “a procedure consisting of instruction, modeling, behavioral rehearsal, and feedback that is used to teach new behaviors or skills” (2004, p. 558). And that’s exactly what it is, a 4-step teaching strategy that works!
BST teaches a person what to do — that is, what behaviors to engage in under a particular circumstance.It allows for practice within the program so that the person can become fluent with the skills.It is an effective train-the-trainer procedure. And perhaps most importantly, can be individualized to each person. Sounds pretty good, doesn’t it?
Let’s break down each of the steps:
Instruction – Provide a description of the skill, its importance or rationale, and when and when not to use the skill. Repeat this step as necessary.
Modeling – Show your participant how to perform the skill. In-vivo modeling is recommended.
Rehearsal – Practice, practice, and practice! Allow the participant opportunities to practice the skill. Recent research suggests that participants should be able to practice in-situ. The trainer should record data on correct and incorrect responding during this step.
Feedback – The trainer should provide positive praise for correct responding and some form of corrective feedback for incorrect responses.
Some requirements before you can implement a BST program include: the person receiving the training must have the pre-requisite skills required for the behaviors you are teaching, the skill must include a chain of behaviors (a number of skills), and you must be able to role-play or video model the skills.
In a Registered Behavior Technician training course I was providing, I used BST to teach various skills to participants. Any skill I was teaching that met the afore-mentioned requirements I taught using BST. Based on the feedback forms from eight cohorts, participants reported that they enjoyed and learned the most when they got to practice the skills being taught, and got immediate feedback.
Here’s an example of how it was used in the training. The skill was implementing preference assessments with clients.
Instructions were provided on why preference assessments are done, when and with whom to do them, how to use the data sheet, the materials required, and how to complete the assessment.
I modeled completing a preference assessment, using one of the course participants as my “client.”
Participants paired up and practiced administering the preference assessment with their colleagues.Participants were able to practice the skill as each preference assessment included 30 trials!
I went to each group and provided feedback on what each person was doing correctly and incorrectly.
What have been your experiences with Behavior Skills Training? Let us know in the comments below. Also, be sure to subscribe to bSci21 via email to receive the latest articles directly to your inbox! And, if you are looking to learn more about innovative topics in behavioral science, while earning a few Continuing Education units in the process, check out our CE series.
Recommended Readings:
Johnson, B.M., Miltenberger, R.G., Egemo-Helm, K., Jostad, C. J., Flessner, C., & Gatheridge, B. (2005). Evaluation of behavioural skills training for teaching abduction-prevention skills to young children. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 38, 67-78.
Miles, N.I., & Wilder, D.A. (2009). The effects of behavioral skills trainingon caregiver implementation of guided compliance. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 42(2), 405-410.
The Four Behavioral Profiles In Outlook
Miltenberger, R. (2004). Behaviour Modification: principals and procedure (3rd ed.) Belmont, CA. Wadsworth Publishing.
The Four Behavioral Profiles In Science
Miltenberger, R.G., Flessner, C., Batheridge, B., Johnson, B., Satterlund, M., & Egemo, K. (2004). Evaluation of behavioural skills training procedures to prevent gun play in children. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 37, 513-516.
Steward, K.K., Carr, J.E., & LeBlanc, L.A. (2007). Evaluation of family-implemented behavioural skills training for teaching social skills to a child with asperger’s disorder. Clinical Case Studies, 6, 252-262.
Let us know your experiences with BST in the comments below, and be sure to subscribe to bSci21 via email to receive the latest articles directly to your inbox!
Zainab Fazal, M.ADS, BCBA, began her career in the developmental disabilities field in 2002, and has dedicated her clinical work and research in the area of Applied Behaviour Analysis (ABA). She has worked for many years in assessing and developing comprehensive programs plans for children, youth, and adults with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD), learning disabilities, other developmental disabilities, behavioural challenges and mental health issues. Her recent work includes training front-line staff and teachers to use ABA in therapeutic and school settings, and has successfully trained individuals for the Registered Behaviour Technician credential with the Behaviour Analyst Certification Board. She is also an adjunct professor at Seneca College teaching ABA courses in the Behavioural Sciences program. Zainab is the founder and director of Phoenix Behaviour Services, a private practice in Toronto, Canada. You can follow her on twitter @Phoenix_ABA and reach her at [email protected].
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