CRIMINAL PROFILLING AND IT’S RELEVANCE IN THE NIGERIAN CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM
ABSTRACT
The Nigerian criminal justice system is not entirely ignorant or unaware of the use and the merits of the application of criminal profiling as a tool in crime investigation. However, criminal profiling in Nigeria has not nearly reached the level of recognition, functionality or institutionalization that it has attained in other jurisdictions.
This study aims to increase the awareness, explore the import, feasibility and the practicality of offender profiling in criminal acts especially those of violent and sexual nature with particular focus on the Nigerian criminal justice system. It will also give an expository critique of the loopholes and impediments in the system and ways criminal profiling can fill up these holes.
The research methods employed in this study includes a combination of both primary and secondary sources. These primary sources include various legislations relating to the criminal justice system in Nigeria and other jurisdictions and countries most especially the USA and the UK. Legislations such as the Criminal Code, The Police Act and the 1999 Constitution will be referred to. Secondary sources include references to textbooks, journals and articles written by leading authors and scholars in the area of criminal and offender profiling. Online articles, journals, abstracts and books will also serve as a secondary information source in this study.
The effectiveness of this field is greatly highlighted in this thesis with the view that criminal investigative analysis will be effectively immersed into the justice system and receive as much recognition as it has in other jurisdictions especially in the US and in major parts of Europe. The question whether or not criminal profiling can be absorbed and modified to suit Nigeria is one which this project attempts to resolve, and if not, why.
CHAPTER ONE:
GENERAL INTRODUCTION TO CRIMINAL PROFILING
1.1 BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY
“The more outré and grotesque an incident is the more carefully it deserves to be examined, and the very point which appears to complicate a case, is, when duly considered and scientifically handled, the one which is most likely to elucidate it”1
This statement made by the world‘s famous fictional detective, Sherlock Holmes, and his endearing ability to solve crime by describing the perpetrator from factual deductions is a skill shared by the expert investigative profiler. Evidence speaks of its own language of patterns and sequences that can reveal the offender‘s behavioural characteristics. Like Sherlock Holmes, the profiler can say ―I know who he must be‖.
It is not uncommon to watch in the news, read in the newspapers or in major documentaries about serial killers and violent criminals who murder, rape or assault victims due to certain similar features that the victims all possess or out of certain distorted motive or intentions. Most serial killers and violent criminals are psychologically impaired based on a peculiar past experience that make them seek some form of personal vendetta against persons who look or act like those that have hurt them in the past or just out of sheer perverse pleasure.
