Exploring the Minds of Criminals: Unraveling Deviance and Profiling in ‘Criminal Minds’

“Criminal Minds” it is a Police Procedural” about a team of profilers in the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Units (Criminal Minds, 2017). The team’s job is to establish a profile of the suspect. The suspect is always a criminal who committed unusual crime. This program is chosen because it clearly displays social deviance. The suspects in this Police Programs are not ordinary criminals. They usually suffer from a mental or personality disorder that makes the incapable of remorse. The criminals were serial killer, child rapist, cult murderers and cold blooded murders.

The FBI team often meets together and study the evidence in the crime scene. The evidence may include the manner of killing, the motive, the weapons use and the strategy to conceal the crime helps the FBI establish a personality profile of the suspect or criminal. The criminals in these programs are social deviant and the where labeled by the police organization as deviant based on the crimes they committed. The FBI behavioral analysis unit who work hand in hand with the police, labels the suspects as not the everyday criminal.

What separates this show from many other crime shows, such as SVU, or CSI is that the focus is on understanding the “un-sub” (unknown subject) as they call it, and their state of mind, the way they think. I enjoy trying to put together the pieces, the clues that hint at what the un-sub has experienced, or what led him/her to make the terrible decisions that he/she did. There is a certain element of trying to understand the psychology and sociology of the characters and the world that draws me in. Aside from there, the fun and quirky relationships between of all of the FBI agents often provides some comic relief that is often needed when watching a show filled with such dark content.

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Personally I love watching many crime/ procedural shows. Some of the graphic depictions in shoes like Criminal Minds can be uncomfortable to watch because of how real some of the crimes and victims are. Part of my point was that if we’re seeing fictionalizations of these images so often, we become somewhat complacent towards the real crimes, especially as they are happening so often? If we become complacent, do we become complicit in a culture of violence both real and fictional, in spite of the fact that the perpetrators are a minority of society? I think it sometimes can be a bit too violent.

Second, most people have built a tolerance for depictions of violent events, but there is a thresh-hold that they employ to ensure that they don’t go too overboard. I often hear “disaster fatigue” is a very real psychological condition by which people become aloof when confronted with awful things in real life. In that sense, it’s vital that people take a time away from such things and remind themselves that there’s also a whole lot of good in the world.

The criminals were extremely dangerous and usually suffering from behavioral disorders or mental illness. They are not normal criminals who committed their crimes because of survival or to earn money. These criminals usually commit their crimes due to passion, for fun or for some superstitious belief. The FBI unit labels these criminals as the most deviant of all criminals; they are extremely dangerous and will continue to commit their crimes until they are caught. It is therefore necessary for the FBI unit to build a personality profile of the criminal in order to known which is the next victim and where will be the next crime.

The FBI team is the one doing the labeling for the deviance.The reason that shows such as “criminal minds” are successful is that they do not glamorize the crime, but focus on understanding and prevention. Some of the shows may be right from news headlines, while others are fictional. These shows build a repertoire with their audiences and keep them invested through this understanding. However I think shows like Criminal Minds expose us to things we may have turned a blind eye to in society. Example: when rape, torture, kidnapping, and murder come into play.

Law enforcement in the real world goes through the same situations as the show provides. The show itself is engaging with well-developed characters that have stayed throughout the majority of all the seasons, thus we grow attached, for instance I love Agent Morgan and Garcia’s character and inter relationship as friends. How they are able to deal with the cases before them and live their lives at the same time, knowing what kind of horror they face every day, to me the idea is in a sense amazing and unreal.

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