Human Behavior and Victimology

This course will focus on the criminal event from both the perspective of victims and the
motives of offenders. It will examine victimization patterns, typologies, lifestyles, causal factors,
consequences and the treatment of victims by the criminal justice system. Students will identify
preincident warning signs, learn about techniques used to defuse immediate danger and learn about
strategies used to prevent future harm.

Behavior: The capacity of mental, physical, emotional, and social activities experienced during
the five stages of a human being's life - prenatal, infancy, childhood, adolescence, and adulthood.
Includes the behaviors as dictated by culture, society, values, morals, ethics, and genetics.

Victimology: Victimology, then, is the study of the etiology (or causes) of victimization, its
consequences, how the criminal justice system accommodates and assists victims, and how other
elements of society, such as the media, deal with crime victims. Victimology is the study of the
relationship between the victim and the perpetrator. To understand this concept, first, we must
understand what the terms victim and perpetrator mean. The victim is a person who has been harmed
by a perpetrator. The perpetrator, also known as the offender, is an individual who has committed the
crime against the victim. Law enforcement agencies use the study of victimology and the theories of
victimology to determine why the victim was targeted by the offender.

Comparative Models in Policing

The police officer on the streets, the representative of an institution known as ‘the police’, is a
concept that is familiar to most citizens of modern societies. It is a concept that we take for granted, but
at the same time one that incorporates numerous inconsistencies and variations. For example, there is a
marked difference between ‘policing’ as a process and ‘the police’ as an organisation. Policing, a term
we might apply to the process of preventing and detecting crime and maintaining order, is an activity
that might be engaged in by any number of agencies or individuals (see Chapter 7). It is, on the one
hand, widely recognised that members of the public, especially victims, engage in policing in so far as
they report crimes to the authorities and help identify the perpetrators. On the other hand, the private
sector and agencies like Neighbourhood Watch and its less institutionalised (US) cousin, the Guardian
Angels, probation officers enforcing drug-testing orders, social workers engaged in child protection
work, street wardens employed by local councils and a myriad other agencies engaged in partnership
work, co-operate in policing societies. The police as an institution, in contrast, is responsible for a range
of services, not all addressing crime and disorder issues, as debates surrounding ‘core issues’ in England
and Wales well illustrate (Mawby 2000). Yet the nature and extent of both policing and the police vary
between different countries. This chapter focuses on the police as an institution and discusses the
extent of this variation and also changes over time. But it also addresses the extent to which global
influences, including ‘multilateralization’ (Bayley and Shearing 1996), mean that while police and
policing within one country are becoming more diverse, on an international level convergence has
occurred.
Fundamentals of Investigation and Intelligence
It is an art which deals with the identity and location of the offender and provides evidence of
guilt through criminal proceedings. The collection of facts to accomplish a three-fold aim:
a.to identify the guilty party;
b.to locate the guilty party; and
c.to provide evidence of his guilt
Criminal investigation is a multi-faceted, problem-solving challenge. Arriving at the scene of a
crime, an officer is often required to rapidly make critical decisions, sometimes involving life and death,
based on limited information in a dynamic environment of active and still evolving events. After a
criminal event is over, the investigator is expected to preserve the crime scene, collect the evidence, and
devise an investigative plan that will lead to the forming of reasonable grounds to identify and arrest the
person or persons responsible for the crime. To meet these challenges, police investigators, through
training and experience, learn investigative processes to develop investigative plans and prioritize
responses.

Criminal investigation is not just a set of task skills, it is equally a set of thinking skills. To become
an effective investigator, these skills need to be consciously understood and developed to the point
where they are deliberately engaged to work through the problem-solving process that is criminal
investigation. Trained thinking and response can be difficult to adapt into our personal repertoires
because we are all conditioned to be much less formal and less evidence driven in our everyday
thinking. Still, as human beings, we are all born investigators of sorts. As Taber (2006) pointed out in his
book, Beyond Constructivism, people constantly construct knowledge, and, in our daily lives, we
function in a perpetual state of assessing the information that is presented to us. Interpreting the
perceptions of what we see and what we hear allows us reach conclusions about the world around us
(Taber, 2006). Some people are critically analytical and want to see evidence to confirm their beliefs,
while others are prepared to accept information at face value until they are presented facts that
disprove their previously held beliefs. Either strategy is generally acceptable for ordinary people in their
everyday lives.

Differences in Intelligence and Investigation:

Investigation reports are often presented to legal processes for fact finding. Hence investigators have a
direct link to prosecutors. Investigations bring sharp focus to facts which they provide to the justice
system. While intelligence reports are provided to decision makers to help guide future activity, they
lack a direct link to prosecution powers. Intelligence reports are often very blurred and are just
probabilities that lack sharp focus.

1] Time orientation

A major difference between an investigation and intelligence is the aspect of time orientation.
Investigations tend to focus on determining causative factors that explaining past events. Emphasis is
usually on an analysis of history, looking for a single right answer. While intelligence, on the other hand,
focuses on the extrapolation of current events to provide plausible representations of the future. While
history and past events are often considered in intelligence exercises, they are often just used to
support projections of what may come. Since intelligence deals with the future it often yields multiple
acceptable answers.

Hence an investigation focuses on past events while intelligence focuses on future events. They all so
differ in that investigations yield only one answer while intelligence produces multiple results.

2] Data gathering and analytical techniques

Investigations and intelligence use very similar data gathering techniques such as interviews of
knowledgeable individuals, physical observations of sites, and reviews of documentation. Despite this
there are certain data gathering activities that are more associated with one activity than the other.
Investigations, with its strong law enforcement roots, will sometimes rely on securing trash as
abandoned property, commonly referred to as “dumpster diving.” Intelligence, on the other hand, may
focus on detailed reviews of patents as a way of discerning how key manufacturing processes operate.
Regardless of the sources of data a key differentiating factor between investigations and strategic
intelligence is how data is analyzed. Analytical techniques in investigations focus on getting the right
answer. They are normally deductive, employing a high level of directed thinking. The elimination
process is usually used to identify answers that do not fit in the investigation. This process then leads to
identification of the right answer. Data gathered is arrayed as evidence in support of the chosen answer.

Analytical techniques in intelligence focus on determining appropriate courses of action based on

anticipated future events. They are virtually all derived from traditional general management consulting
and include such things as scenario analysis, SWOT analysis, competitive positioning assessment, and
various microeconomic evaluation methods. Since such approaches generally produce an array of
answers, there is heavy dependence on lateral thinking by those conducting the analysis. The ideal
outcome is a series of actionable initiatives supporting a robust strategy to achieve long term objectives
in the face of an uncertain future.

3] Skill set requirements

Not surprisingly, intelligence and investigations utilize many of the same skills but the people who do
the best investigations tend to have experience and backgrounds in law enforcement and related fields.
Over time, they internalize the type of deductive, directed thinking that leads them to identify causative
factors for past events. Practitioners of strategic intelligence, on the other hand, should have a strong
grounding in the different types of analysis techniques. Most gain this through experience either in
management consulting or as part of a corporate strategic planning function. Investigators therefore
require good deductive and direct thinking while intelligence officers require very good analytic
techniques.

4] Nature of conclusions

Investigations must present facts as they are received and discovered while avoiding making final
assumptions. The conclusion will majorly be based on evidence acquired and is thus majorly based by an
investigators work. Intelligence on the other hand will provide their final information based on their
conclusions. This is due to the fact that future projections may lack evidence directly linked to them.

5] Dissemination

Investigation yields information that is open for public scrutiny and is often tested to ensure there is
credibility. Intelligence on the other hand often yields confidential information that is provided to
specific people. There is privacy in sharing of the information and it’s often not available for public
scrutiny.

Conclusion

So although investigations and intelligence are closely linked and investigation can be a component of
intelligence there are fundamental difference among them that differentiate them as discussed above.

Specialized Crime Investigation with Legal Medicine

Legal Medicine: is a branch of medicine which deals with the application of medical knowledge to the
purposes of law in the administration of justice. Application of medicine to legal cases.

Forensic Medicine: Application of medical science to elucidate legal problems

Medical Jurisprudence: Knowledge of law in relation to the practice of medicine

Forensic Photography
Forensic photography, also referred to as crime scene photography, is an activity that records
the initial appearance of the crime scene and physical evidence, in order to provide a permanent record
for the courts. Crime scene photography differs from other variations of photography because crime
scene photographers usually have a very specific purpose for capturing each image.

Photograph: The result of the photography, is an image created by light falling on a light-sensitive
surface usually photographic film or electronic imager

Photography: Photography is the art, application and practice of creating durable images by recording
light or other electromagnetic radiation, either electronically by means of an image sensor, or
chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film.

Police Photography - It is an art or science which deals with the study of the principles of photography,
the reproduction of photographic evidence, and its application to police work.
Forensic Photography - the art or science of photographically documenting a crime scene and evidence
for laboratory examination and analysis for purposes of court trial.