MULTIPLE CHOICE
1. Which is NOT true of offenders, according to Beauregard and Bouchard’s 2010
study?
a. They found that offenders under the influence of drugs and/or alcohol displayed less
forensic awareness.
b. Offenders who had target preferences were more likely to take forensic precautions.
c. Offenders who entered a victim’s residence and engaged in specific sexual acts
during the crime were also more likely to exhibit forensic awareness.
d. Offenders tended to be consistent in their forensic awareness and directed most of
their efforts toward removing DNA that tied them to the crime scene.
2. What did the term “forensics” originally mean?
a. belong to or used in courts of law
b. belong to or used in medicine
c. belong to or used in psychiatry
d. belong to or used in crime labs
3. This is often critical to the outcome of criminal cases.
a. academic research
b. intangible evidence
c. physical forensics
d. hearsay
4. Which is NOT true, according to Beauregard and Martineau (2012)?
a. Often forensic evidence is never sent to crime labs.
b. There often is not increased evidence of identifying suspects, pressing charges, or
securing convictions.
c. Offenders may be learning from popular media how to decrease their chances of
being caught and convicted.
d. All of the above are true.
14. For profiling to fulfill its potential, law enforcement must do which of the following?
a. collaborate with academic and medical professionals
b. improve media relations
c. collaborate with profilers from other countries
d. collaborate more with the FBI
6. What is part of the serial-killer stereotype?
a. They are stupid.
b. They are good-looking.
c. They are employed.
d. They are exceptionally intelligent.
5. Which is not one of the four “crime phases” of murderer behavior that investigators
use to develop offender profiles and gain insight into their personalities?
a. antecedent
b. method and manner
c. body disposal
d. pre-offense behavior
7. Law enforcement agencies collect data, often using case studies or anecdotal
information, which then is transformed into general descriptions of the types of persons
most commonly associated with a certain type of criminal activity.
a. offender profiling
b. geographic profiling
c. equivocal death profiling
d. crime scene profiling
8. Who designed the radex model?
a. Kim Rossmo
b. Ronald Holmes
c. David Canter
d. Richard Kocsis
9. Which is not one of the three interlinked areas of profiling research that Salfati
summarized?
a. place-specific behavior
b. individual differentiation
c. behavioral consistency
d. inferences about offender characteristics
10. What did Beauregard and Mieczkowski (2012) note in their study of 201 sex
offenders?
a. being a stranger to the perpetrator increases the risk of harm
b. being known to the perpetrator increases the risk of harm
c. the victim/offender relationship does not affect harm
d. Offenders only harm women.
11. Also referred to as criminal investigation analysis, this form of profiling is based
upon the FBI model developed by their Behavioral Science Unit. Psychosocial data are
compared to other similar cases and investigators engage in an
experiential/informational guessing technique to reconstruct the offenders’ personality.
a. offender profiling
b. geographic profiling
c. equivocal death profiling
d. crime scene profiling
12. Today we know that violent criminal activity can be very complicated and well
thought out in which area?
a. fantasy
b. planning
b. execution
d. all of the above
13. A serious problem with the dichotomous model of organized and disorganized crime
scenes is _____.
a. that it is used primarily by the FBI and not other law enforcement agencies
b. interagency co-operation
c. that it applies only to crime scenes involving violence
d. the lack of rigorous reliability and validity testing
15. This profiling tool is used to prioritize a variety of homicides and other serious
crimes. Also known as criminal personality assessment, it is applied to other forms of
profiling. Profilers match the personality characteristics of a certain type of offender with
those of a suspect.
a. offender profiling
b. geographic profiling
c. equivocal death profiling
d. psychological profiling
16. Such profiling is empirically based and has not placed much value on motivation or
personality. It does help law enforcement in deciding where to begin knocking on doors
and setting up stakeouts.
a. offender profiling
b. geographic profiling
c. equivocal death profiling
d. crime scene profiling
17. A geographic profile does not include this.
a. distance
b. time
c. mental maps
d. mobility
18. According to Rossmo, which offender style prefers to travel away from home to hunt
victims?
a. hunter
b. poacher
c. troller
d. trapper
19. This theory suggests that crime occurs when an opportunity arises within the normal
areas an offender travels, such as to and from work, recreation, school, and community
activities.
a. rational choice
b. routine activity theory
c. crime pattern
d. life-course
20. This theory suggests that offenders are more likely to act on their first opportunity in
relation to their buffer zone.
a. routine activity
b. rational choice
c. crime pattern
d. strain
21. Serial predators prefer to operate within comfort zones and experience _____ as
they leave that comfort zone.
a. deep depression
b. excitement
c. a distance decay function
d. discomfort
22. This research suggests that crimes are more likely to occur closer to an offender‘s
domicile and that the farther away he/she travels from home base the fewer crimes they
will commit.
a. traveling crime
b. road crime
c. vacation crime
d. journey-to-crime
23. What was the real problem facing profilers in attempting to effectively profile the
D.C. Snipers?
a. the variety of rifles used in the killings
b. their mobility
c. their race and the number of offenders
d. ineffective eye witnesses
24. Keppel examined the solvability factors involved in serial murder investigations.
Which of the following is NOT one of those factors?
a. quality of court procedures during the preliminary hearing
b. quality of police interviews with eyewitnesses
c. quality of scientific analysis of the physical evidence
d. quality of investigations at the crime scene
25. The following are types of forensic evidence inspection and analysis performed in
crime labs except _____.
a. mental health diagnosis
b. glass and soil fragments
c. hair, fibers, and paint analysis
d. arson analysis including flammable residues and explosives.
26. Which of the following is a false statement regarding the Body Farm in Tennessee?
a. There are currently five such facilities operating in the United States.
b. Bodies are observed decomposing under controlled conditions.
c. Remains are often skeletonized and added to the research collection.
d. Approximately 40-50 bodies of inmates who died in prison are donated yearly.
27. This process occurs when digestive enzymes eat from the body, causing the tissue
to liquefy.
a. putrefaction
b. homeostasis
c. retrogestation
d. rigor mortis
28. This research effort aims to scientifically standardize the definition of legal terms
such as “heinous,” “atrocious,” “evil,” and “depraved.”
a. the Body Farm
b. the Hare Checklist
c. the Thesaurus of Evil
d. the Depravity Standard
29. In the matter of serial killers, it seems that people are overwhelmingly in favor of
_____.
a. execution
b. long term mental health therapy
c. long term prison sentences
d. life without possibility of parole
30. According to Hickey, which of the following is the best response to reducing the
number of serial murders?
a. reduce violence in the home
b. reduce the number of appeals filed by serial offenders
c. provide appropriate therapy for traumatized children
d. hire more law enforcement to investigate serial murder
TRUE/FALSE
1. Media impact, management of departmental resources, and unusual complexity of
any given case are rare problems associated with serial murder cases.
2. Victims, even in death, are often storybooks about the offender and the
circumstances of the crime.
3. Race and ethnicity are often associated with specific types of violent crimes.
4. Equivocal death profiling is also referred to as psychological autopsy.
5. The Body Farm is an academic research facility at the University of West Georgia
that studies the decomposition of the human body for forensic purposes.
COMPLETION
1. _____ identification is known to produce specific biases.
2. Much can be learned about the offenders, of course, from their _____.
3. _____ draws upon many areas of forensics.
4. _____ help investigators develop databases and benchmarks for serial crime.
5. Schneidman describes _____ as “a reconstruction of the motivations, philosophy,
psychodynamics, and existential crises of the decedent.”
ESSAY QUESTIONS
1. Discuss how after the O.J. Simpson case, the Supreme Court changed the rules by
which scientific evidence information is to be used in courtrooms.
2. Compare and contrast how courts use the Daubert decision with the Frye decision.
3. Why, in judgments of dangerousness, are practitioners prone to have a high ratio of
false positives? Discuss your reasoning.