Terrorist Profiling Process and Psychological Attributes-Opinion of Indian Law-Enforcement Officials and Academicians

Profiling is a method of identifying the probable perpetrator of a crime based on the crime scene information analysis. Terrorist profiling plays lead role in counter terrorism. In the present scenario terrorist profiling is a major tool for law enforcement officials’ interims of detecting terrorist and for counter terrorism operation. The purpose of this study is to find out whether the law enforcement officials and Academicians include profiling process and psychological attributes under terrorist profiling. The data were collected from 212 respondents, of which 194 of them were law-enforcement officials, 11 retired law-enforcement officials and 7 academicians across all age groups. They were administered structured questionnaire to elicit the responses.  The data were analysed through descriptive statistics and chi-square tests. The results revealed that in profiling process, 98.6% of the participants opined ‘yes’ on determining whether the crime was organized or not, 64.4% of the participants opined ‘yes’ on reconstruction of the crime scene A majority of 94.8% of the respondents agreed about inclusion of psychological attributes in profiling information. On Psychological Attributes, 88.7% of the participants opined ‘yes’ on efficient, Organized and Responsible psychological attributes, 61.8% of the participants opined ‘yes’ on Neuroticism, 62.3% of them opined ‘yes’ on Agreeableness and 62.7% of them opined ‘yes’ on extraversion.