There is an episode of The Wire with a depiction of the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit that is much closer to the way the BSU actually functions. Detective Jimmy McNulty takes a case of a serial killer to the BSU in Quantico, VA for a profile of the killer to be worked up. The irony of the episode is that the case has been fabricated by McNulty to cover the costs of another investigation, and the resulting profile of the killer describes McNulty himself.
In a real case, a local law enforcement agency has exhausted all leads and doesn't have anywhere else to go with the case. The agency asks the FBI for assistance. When the BSU personnel (they are not necessarily all special agents) have an opening in their schedule, they set a date for one or possibly two of the primary case investigators to come to Quantico to present the case.
The investigator(s) gather up a summary of the evidence in the case to take with them, or otherwise send the FBI electronically. They have to create a summary because the paperwork in a major case might fill an entire bookshelf of thick three-ring binders, if reduced to paper.
The detective(s) meet with the BSU people for one to three days, then go home. Within a few weeks, the BSU will send the agency their profile, describing their best guess (they probably wouldn't like me using that term) on the characteristics of the suspect. Typically, the profile will be 60%-80% accurate. The detectives get to try and decide which 60%-80% applies.
There is no executive jet on call. Agents don't march into the local cop shop and start giving whiteboard briefings of the "unsub." There is no geeky computer diva back at HQ who has instant access to every scrap of information ever recorded, and who appears on a video conference several times each day. There is no boy genius special agent who knows everything, wears sweater vests, and carries a six-inch revolver as his sidearm.
In the 1990s there was a TV show called Profiler that had a depiction of the FBI similar to the one in Criminal Minds. That job, and that unit, didn't exist, either.
Real FBI profilers seldom, if ever, visit crime scenes, or personally arrest the people they are targeting. They do occasionally perform in-depth interviews of violent offenders in prison to study the way their minds and thought processes work. TV producers could do a real-life portrayal of FBI profilers, but watching people sit around conference tables and talk, or read in their windowless basement offices, would not be very interesting.
Read other answers by Tim Dees on Quora:
- Is it unsafe for police officers to handle crack cocaine with their bare hands?
- In the movies, the police or FBI or CIA will let a criminal out of prison in order to help law enforcement solve a crime. Does this ever really happen?
- How does the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list work?
from Quora http://ift.tt/2ggao4Y
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