What Motivates Serial Killers - Essay Example

Analyze the Offender Analyze the Offender According to Clark , target centric approach is the best method of managing intelligence analysis and leads to effective analysis and at the same time meets the needs of the end user. The approach is an upgrade of the old approach, which was used by intelligence. Unlike the old approach where questions were applied to produce static answers that were used to assess and predict future eventualities, the target centric approach involves active data structures, common operating picture, and dynamic algorithms. The algorithm organizes, integrates, and reassesses the larger body of information whenever new information is introduced into the system. The model should involve all the stakeholders affected by the intelligence produced. In this approach, the picture of the target is shared among all the participants therefore information can easily be shared regarding the target (Clark, 2010). A Person is regarded as a serial killer if he/she had committed murder of more than three people over a period of one month or less on separate events. There are different things that motivate serial killers. One of the major motivations of serial killers is lying on psychological satisfaction. Some individuals based on their life experiences find pleasure on killing people, and it is their only means of satisfaction. For this reason, they commit a series of killings within a short period. According to the federal bureau of investigation, other motivations to serial killing may include, anger, and thrill, financial gain and attention seeking. Some serial killers are paid to murder people and these acts as their main motivation to the crime. The offender is seduced with incentives to kill people for different reasons, which mostly is financial gain. Some individuals go to the extent of being serial killers for attention seeking (Wilson, 2007). Anger, on the other hand, may be the most dangerous and can motivate serial killers a great deal. Life experiences such as racism, gender discrimination, and stigmatization by different age groups may highly influence individuals to develop unpleasant behaviors’. Due to the above reasons, the individuals target these groups resulting from earlier experiences as a way of vengeance. Serial killers, therefore, find themselves in these situations for due to life circumstances (Newton, 2006). There are common characteristics among serial killers. Many exhibit a higher degree of mental illness, which contributes to their homicidal behavior. Individuals with a mental disorder may sometimes have psychotic breaks that make them believe to have a different identity from their own and are compelled to murder by other entities. They also lack guilt or remorse, impulsivity, and control. Psychopaths always seem normal and at times charming which is an adaptation they posses to disguise the people around them and some psychiatrist refer to this character as the mask of sanity. In most cases, someone close to them abused the serial killer at some point sexually, physically, or even emotionally. The serial killers are also more likely to engage in fetishism, partials, or necrophilia. Individual with homicidal behaviors is associated with sadistic activities. For children who have not reached maturity, they find pleasure in torturing animals (Boba-Santos, 2013). The development of serial killers also has a great influence on their lives. The way children are brought up also determines whether the homicidal characteristics will develop or fade. The rejection of children by their families lowers their self-esteem and due to these, they develop their fantasy world where they are in full control of whatever happens. The process of development causes the serial killer trauma and therefore the homicidal behavior gains roots in their system, and they progress in the behavior. In their childhood development, the serial killer parents divorced and there was the lack of control by the parents and the child could do as they wished. The homicidal behaviors developed in the child and later became a serial killer (Clark, 2010). There are two types of serial killers that is, organized and non-organized. For the organized ones, every move they take is well planned methodically where they abduct the target, kill them, and dispose of them in a separate place without notice of the authorities. Their way of disposing of bodies is well calculated to fool the forensic experts. They also follow up on their crimes in the media and take pride in them. To accomplish their operations, they lure their targets to a private place where they cannot be traced. In most instances, they kill prostitutes as they voluntarily go with strangers to unknown destinations. Some of the organized serial killers are controversial as they have friends and lovers. They do this to disguise their homicidal behaviors and during investigations, they are mostly described as harmless and friendly (Boba-Santos, 2013). An example of such an organized serial killer is Jack Bower in a movie series twenty-four (24). The individual worked for the government as an intelligent investigator. Later on after resignation, Jack was unhappy with operations of the government. He decided to avenge for the citizens and in the process developed to be a serial killer. His target was government officials who could not cooperate with him. Jack had a wife and daughter and mostly was very intelligent. Discrimination by his family and government triggered him to possess the homicidal characteristic and the government mostly described him as a social path. His aim was to make things right by coercing government officials to perform duties as he wished. The life of Jack was private and fewer people could account for his normal life. Tracing Jack was the most difficult task the authorities experienced, as he had no permanent residential place (Wilson, 2007). To perform his operations, he kept friends in the government secretly who helped him get away with crimes. He used his intelligence to manipulate individuals in the government who had no idea or clue of his ill intentions. In the process of reforming the government and bringing the corrupt to justice, he killed many innocent individuals who prevented him from accomplishing his goals. He could then follow up on the cases to ensure there was no evidence to incriminate him (Ramsland, 2006). The behavior of this individual was not different from the normal person and conducted all his duties as expected. He could mingle with others normally though in an investigative manner. After killing individuals with high rankings in the government, he could disappear for a while and made people believe he was dead. He had no sympathy and was always violent and high tempered. Protecting the ones he loved was the most important to him and could not rest without settling their case. Jack always appeared to be controversial in his activities and tracking his activities was very difficult for the intelligence team. His major motivation was anger and at some point, he was after vengeance of his friend who was killed in cold blood (Newton, 2006). In most of the crimes Jack committed, he could keenly follow up on the profile of the target and their activities before attacking. To ensure the profiling was correct, he manipulated a government official who worked in CTU. The individual was very much close to Jack and was an expert in profiling. In his most recent homicidal acts, he killed Russian officials whom he believed were responsible for the murder of his best friend. Before killing his targets, he tortured them to acquire information he considered important in his investigations. Furthermore, the movie series indicates that he goes to the extreme of coercing the US head of states (Murray, 2008). On the contrary, disorganized serial killers are easily brought to justice due to their careless acts. Most of their operations are not planned, and they do not dispose of the bodies of their victims. They are impulsive, and their victims are mostly killed with any available weapon. In this case, the unorganized serial killer have few friends are violent and whenever checked seem to have some mental illness (Keppel & Birnes, 2003). From the incidents discussed above, the following are identified. Organized serial killers are mostly influenced by environmental and social reasons. Rejection by their families or people close to them influence them to practice or exhibit homicidal behaviors. Disappointment or anger from situations they consider unfair can also cause them to exhibit these behaviors. For the unorganized serial killers, their behaviors are mostly influenced by their childhood trauma or abuse in their childhood. Most of them are found to have mental illnesses unlike the organized serial killers who perform the acts with a certain specific reason. For these reasons, families should always keep a keen eye on their children to reduce this menace. It is also of equal importance to always treat every individual equally to avoid the disappointments, which will act in minimizing the homicidal behaviors. Schools, both private and public institutions, should assume the responsibility of teaching the society the significance of taking society members with care. As the characteristics cannot be easily recognized in the early ages and specifically for the organized serial killers. For the implementation of the policies to be effective, the government and the society should take the issue as a society crisis. This may help to solve such crisis; geographic profiling tactics may be used. The method helps in analyzing connected crimes to determine the most probable residence of the offender (Felson, 2008). References Boba-Santos, Rachel (2013). Crime Analysis with Crime Mapping, third Edition, Sage. Clark, Robert M. (2010). Intelligence Analysis: A Target-Centric Approach, third Edition, CQ Press Felson, M. (2008). Crime and everyday life. Thousand Oaks [u.a.: Sage. Keppel, R. D., & Birnes, W. J. (2003). The psychology of serial killer investigations: The grisly business unit. Amsterdam: Academic Press. Murray, W. (2008). Serial killers. U.K: Canary Press. Newton, M. (2006). The encyclopedia of serial killers. New York: Facts on File. Rams land, K. M. (2006). Inside the minds of serial killers: Why they kill. Westport, Conn: Pager. Wilson, D. (2007). Serial killers: Hunting Britons and their victims, 1960 to 2006. Winchester: Waterside. Read More