Criminal Profile of the School Shooter

In the twenty-first century, violent acts such as shootings at schools have become commonplace. Many students who opened fire were the targets of social exclusion, bullying, and harassment from their fellow students. Instead, the individual’s psychological experience acts as the catalyst rather than the fact that they conflict with their peers. The ability to accurately create a criminal profile is essential because school shooters frequently manage to escape the crime scene.

If I were to create a criminal profile of a school shooter, then first of all, it would be a student of the school or its recent graduate. On the eve of the incident, it will also be a person who experienced severe shocks: financial losses, acute family conflicts, or an episode of excessive bullying. Particular attention should be paid to those students who were bullied at school. It will also be necessary to look for accomplices since the shooters often do the crime alone, but someone else is involved in the preparation. I will ask the school’s students because the shooter could mention the plan or that they want revenge.

The problem of compiling a criminal profile has been studied a lot in the scientific community. Stallings and Hall (2019) claim that student school killers are usually white men who commit crimes in rural and suburban areas. Therefore, in my profile of the perpetrator, I will include a male because women have never committed a school shooting. Dagenhard et al. (2019) also list narcissism, poor anger management, a fascination with violence, low self-esteem, and a lack of empathy as characteristics that are inherently present in shooters. I will include these traits in my criminal profile, and talking to teachers and school psychologists will help find the shooter.

In conclusion, the criminal profile I compiled initially included those factors indicated by past crime statistics. The main criterion is that the shooter studied at the school where the crime was committed. A critical component are acts of bullying at school and the presence of certain character traits. Age and gender can also be included in the profile, but just because women have not shot at school before does not exclude the possibility of this happening in the future.

References

Dagenhard, P., Thompson, A., Dake, J. A., Pescara-Kovach, L., & Rega, P. (2019). Active Shooter Events in Schools: A Review of Reports and Related Materials. Health Behavior and Policy Review.

Stallings, R. A., & Hall, J. B. (2019). Averted targeted school killings from 1900-2016. Criminal Justice Studies, 32(3), 222–238.