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The practice of criminal profiling is frequently seen as being applicable to crimes of serial arson, although there appears to be little empirical research that examines serial arson offense behaviors in the specific context of criminal profiling. The present study seeks to develop an empirical model of serial arsonist behaviors that can be systematically linked with probable offender characteristics. Analysis has produced a model of offense behaviors that identify four discrete behavior patterns, all of which share a constellation of common nondiscriminatory behaviors. The inherent behavioral themes of each of these patterns are explored in this chapter with discussion of their broader implications for our understanding of serial arson. The practice of and research into criminal profiling has predominantly been focused on crimes of sexual violence, such as murder and rape. Although comparatively little research has actually been developed, profiling is nonetheless frequently ci...

On April 9 the world witnessed the most striking image of the war: In the center of Baghdad, in a scene reminiscent of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 (the wall that had separated East and West Germany since the end of World War II), Iraqi citizens with help from U.S. Marines toppled a towering bronze statue of Saddam Hussein. As the statue came crashing to the ground, a crowd of jubilant Iraqis cheered loudly, danced for joy, and hit the statue with their shoes, a gesture of contempt in Iraq. At this moment, psychologically at least, the regime of Saddam Hussein collapsed. Brigadeer General Vincent K. Brooks summarized the victory at a briefing at U.S. command headquarters, stating, “Today the regime is in disarray. The capital city has been added to those places where the regime has lost control.” Finally, U.S. troops made an assault on Tikrit, Saddam Hussein’s hometown, considered to be the last holdout for remnants of forces loyal to his regime. Tikrit was expected to ...

On January 25, 1898, one oft he most modern ships in the United States' navy steamed into the harbour of Havana, Cuba. The ship was a cruiser called the Maine, A war was being fought in Cuba at this time and the Maine had been sent to Havana as a demonstration of American power. Three weeks later, on the nigh t of February 15.   huge explosion shook the city. The Maine   was blown to pieces and 260 of its crew were killed. To this day. the cause of the explosion that destroyed the Maine remains a mystery. Some believe that it was set off by an accidental spar kill the ship's magazine, or ammunition store. At the time, however many Americans believed that the explosion had been caused by an enemy mine. The man who made this claim most loudly was a newspaper owner named William Randolph Hearst. "THE WARSHIP MAINE   SPLIT IN TWO BY AN ENEMY'S INFERNAL [hellish] MACHINE, " read the headline in one of his newspapers on February 17. Th e story which follow...

The term cohesion literally means “sticking together.” A cohesive group is one that holds together; its members usually like each other and jointly identify as members of their groups. You can probably think of a number of cohesive groups that you belong to, ranging from athletic teams to religious denominations. Groups that suffer from friction and fragmentation are less likely to promote learning than cohesive ones. Lack of cohesion increases the potential for subgrouping, where some members form a kind of alliance that is often in adversarial relation with other members and subgroups. A person who is not a member of a subgroup may end up as a scapegoat, vulnerable to attack from any subgroup. This kind of behavior is most blatant on the playground, but in fact it plays out constantly (though often with more subtlety) in adult organizations of any sort, including classrooms. In-group and out-group phenomena arouse anxiety and thus increase defensive behavior; energy is defle...