Behavioural Inference, Investigative Profiling, And Juvenile Justice: Methodological Utility, Epistemic Limits, And Legal Constraints

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Dhairya Pandhi, BA LLB (Hons.), MIT-WPU School of Law, Centre for Crime Sciences and Forensic Intelligence (CCSFI)

ABSTRACT

Behavioural profiling occupies a contested position within investigative practice, situated between legitimate investigative inference and epistemically unsupported narrative construction. While investigators inevitably draw inferences from conduct, scene dynamics, and interaction patterns, the legitimacy of profiling depends on whether such reasoning remains subordinate to evidence rather than becoming an unacknowledged substitute for proof. This research examines whether profiling retains any defensible place in investigations involving children and adolescents, where developmental instability, peer influence, emotional volatility, and situational escalation weaken the relationship between observed conduct and stable identity. Drawing upon profiling scholarship, investigative psychology, behavioural evidence analysis, developmental criminology, bias literature, and Indian legal materials, this paper distinguishes disciplined hypothesis generation from typological or personality-based attribution. It critically evaluates major profiling models while engaging key critiques concerning behavioural consistency, homology, non-falsifiability, and cognitive bias, with particular attention to how class bias, stereotype amplification, and moral panic can distort investigative inference in juvenile contexts. The study further situates profiling within the framework of the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023 and the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015, arguing that profiling lacks the transparency, verifiability, and adversarial testability required for evidentiary use, while dispositional labelling of children conflicts with child- centred and anti-stigma legal principles. The paper concludes that profiling survives only in a narrow and conditional form: as a provisional, bias-aware investigative aid, explicitly subordinate to independently established evidence and never a substitute for proof or identity attribution.

Keywords: Behavioural Profiling; Juvenile Justice; Investigative Inference; Cognitive Bias; Evidence Law

613. BEHAVIOURAL INFERENCE, INVESTIGATIVE PROFILING, AND JUVENILE JUSTICE- METHODOLOGICAL

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