91172.pdf

1 Police and Law Enforcement—Adult Forensics

TABLE II General Characteristics, Resultant Attitudes and Beliefs, and

Deviant Behaviors of 36 Sexual Murderers'^3

Background characteristics

Family background Individual development Performance

Dominance of fantasy School failure

History of personal abuse Sporadic work record

Unskilled

Poor military record

Solo sex

Deviant behaviors

i Evaluation of victim and Rape

society

World viewed as unjust Mutilation

Authority/life viewed as Torture

inconsistent

Autocratic preference

Obsession with dominance

through aggression

Fantasy as reality

of characteristics typical of this type of offender. For example, the sexual murderer
tends to be intelligent, good-looking, of average socioeconomic status, and an oldest
son or first/second born. However, they also tend to have an attitude of devaluation
toward people (having failed to form significant attachments), view the world as un-
just, have an unstable or inconsistent view of authority and justice, and tend to have
an obsession with dominance through aggression. These sexual murderers also tend
to have few attachments outside their immediate families, tend to live in a created
fantasy world in which they feel comfortable, and have a history of deviant behav-
iors. Based on these sets of characteristics, a profile can be developed (see Table II).
Some researchers (Reining, 1988) state that the habitual criminal shares many
personality characteristics with the supercop (a police officer who consistently per-
forms within the top 90th percentile). Supercops score essentially the same on a test
measuring perceived descriptive characteristics of habitual criminals. Further, there
were similarities found between habitual criminals and supercops on such dimen-
sions as control, aggressiveness, vigilance, rebelliousness, energy level, frankness in
expression, intensity of personal relationships, self-esteem, feelings of uniqueness,

""FBI (1985a, p. 6).