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Offender profiling, also known as criminal profiling, is an investigative strategy used by
law enforcement agencies to identify likely
suspect
In law enforcement jargon, a suspect is a known person accused or suspected of committing a crime. Police and reporters in the United States often use the word suspect as a jargon when referring to the perpetrator of the offense (perp in dated U ...
s and has been used by
investigators to link cases that may have been committed by the same perpetrator.
Multiple crimes may be linked to a specific offender and the profile may be used to predict the identified offender's future actions. In the 1980s, most researchers believed offender profiling was relevant only to
sex crimes, like serial
rape
Rape is a type of sexual assault usually involving sexual intercourse or other forms of sexual penetration carried out against a person without their consent. The act may be carried out by physical force, coercion, abuse of authority, or ag ...
or
sexual homicide
Lust murder, also called sexual homicide, is a homicide which occurs in tandem with either an overt sexual assault or sexually-symbolic behavior. ''Lust murder'' is associated with the paraphilic term erotophonophilia, which is sexual arousal or ...
, but since the late 1990s research has been published to support its application to
arson
Arson is the crime of willfully and deliberately setting fire to or charring property. Although the act of arson typically involves buildings, the term can also refer to the intentional burning of other things, such as motor vehicles, wat ...
(1998), and then later
terrorism
Terrorism, in its broadest sense, is the use of criminal violence to provoke a state of terror or fear, mostly with the intention to achieve political or religious aims. The term is used in this regard primarily to refer to intentional violen ...
(2000) and
burglary
Burglary, also called breaking and entering and sometimes housebreaking, is the act of entering a building or other areas without permission, with the intention of committing a criminal offence. Usually that offence is theft, robbery or murder ...
(2017).
Theory
Psychological profiling is described as a method of suspect identification which seeks to identify a person's mental, emotional, and personality characteristics based on things done or left at the crime scene.
There are two major assumptions made when it comes to offender profiling: behavioral consistency and homology. Behavior consistency is the idea that an offender's crimes will tend to be similar to one another. Homology is the idea that similar crimes are committed by similar offenders.
Fundamental assumptions that offender profiling relies upon, such as the homology assumption, have been proven outdated by advances in psychology and behavioral science.
The majority of profiling approaches assume that behavior is primarily determined by personality, not situational factors, an assumption that psychological research has recognized as a mistake since the 1960s.
Profilers have been noted to be very reluctant to participate in studies of profiling's accuracy.
In a 2021 article it was noted that out of 243 cases, around 188 were solved with the help of criminal profiling
Results of the famous “Coals to Newcastle” study found that the predictions made by profilers were accurate about 66% of the time. However, the profiles led to an arrest in just 5 of the 184 cases. In other words, there was just a 2.7% success rate when the profiles were applied out in the field.
Criticism
, although the practice of offender profiling is widely used, publicized and researched globally, there is a significant lack of empirical research or evidence to support the validity of psychological profiling in criminal investigations. Critics question the reliability, validity, and utility of criminal profiles generally provided in police investigations. Even over the years common criminal profiling methods have changed and been looked down upon due to weak definitions that differentiate the criminal's behaviors, assumptions and their psychodynamic process of the offender actions and characteristics that occur. In other words, this leads to poor and misleading profiles on offenders because they are based on opinions and decisions made up from one profiler conducting research on the offender. Research in 2007-2008 into profiling's effectiveness have prompted researchers to label the practice as
pseudoscientific
Pseudoscience consists of statements, beliefs, or practices that claim to be both scientific and factual but are incompatible with the scientific method. Pseudoscience is often characterized by contradictory, exaggerated or unfalsifiable claim ...
.
At the time,
Malcolm Gladwell of ''
The New Yorker
''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...
'' compared profiling to
astrology
Astrology is a range of Divination, divinatory practices, recognized as pseudoscientific since the 18th century, that claim to discern information about human affairs and terrestrial events by studying the apparent positions of Celestial o ...
and
cold reading.
Other critics described criminal profiling as an investigative tool hidden behind a lack of scientific evidence and support.
Unregulated usage
The profession of criminal profiling is highly unregulated.
There is no governing body which determines who is and who is not qualified to be a criminal profiler, and therefore those who identify themselves as criminal profilers may range from someone with minimal to someone with extensive experience in the realm of criminal investigation.
In addition to the lack criteria as to what makes an expert in the field of criminal profiling, there is little empirical evidence supporting the accuracy of criminal profiling.
There is an abundance of anecdotal support for criminal profiling, much of which originates from reports made by police officers and investigators regarding the performance of criminal profilers.
However, law enforcement agents have been found to greatly support the use of criminal profiling, but studies have shown that detectives are poor profilers themselves.
One study presented police officers with two different profiles for the same perpetrator, each of which varied greatly from the officers’ own description.
[Smith, M., & Alison, L. (2001, March). ''Barnum effects in offender profiles.'' Paper presented at the Fifth Biannual Conference of Investigative Psychology, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK] It was found that the officers were unable to determine whether one profile was more accurate than the other, and felt that all profiles accurately described the perpetrator. Officers were able to find truth in whichever profile they viewed, believing it accurately described the perpetrator, demonstrating the presence of the
Barnum effect
The Barnum effect, also called the Forer effect or, less commonly, the Barnum–Forer effect, is a common psychological phenomenon whereby individuals give high accuracy ratings to descriptions of their personality that supposedly are tailored ...
.
In addition, an investigator's judgement of the accuracy of a profile is impacted by the perceived source of the information; if the officer believes that the profile was written by an “expert” or “professional”, they are likely to perceive it as more accurate than a profile written by someone who is identified as a consultant. This poses a genuine problem when considering that there are no true criteria which determine who may be considered a “professional” criminal profiler, and when considering that support for criminal profiling is largely based on the opinion of police officers.
Typologies
The most routinely used typology in profiling is categorizing crime scenes, and by extension offender's personalities, as either "organized" or "
disorganized".
The idea of classifying crime scenes according to organized/disorganized dichotomy is credited to the FBI profiler
Roy Hazelwood.
A typology of serial sexual homicides advocated by
Robert Keppel
Robert David Keppel (June 15, 1944 – June 14, 2021) was an American law enforcement officer and detective. He was also an associate professor at the University of New Haven and Sam Houston State University. Keppel was known for his contribut ...
and
Richard Walter categorizes them as either power–assertive, power–reassurance, anger–retaliatory, or anger–excitation.
Criminal profiling can also be ex-ante or ex-post. Descriptive profiling of a perpetrator is a type of ex-post profiling, and can be used to prevent a serial killer from striking again.
Approaches
There are three leadings approaches in the area of offender profiling: the criminal investigative approach, the clinical practitioner approach, and the scientific statistical approach. The criminal investigative approach is what is used by law enforcement and more specifically by the
Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU) within the
FBI
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic Intelligence agency, intelligence and Security agency, security service of the United States and its principal Federal law enforcement in the United States, federal law enforcement age ...
. The BAU "assists law enforcement agencies by their review and assessment of a criminal act, by interpreting the offender's behavior during the crime and the interactions between the offender and the victim during the commission of the crime and as expressed in the crime scene."
The clinical practitioner approach focuses on looking at each case as unique, making the approach very individualistic. One practitioner, Turco, believed that all violent crimes were a result of the mother-child struggle where female victims represent the offender's mother. This is also recognized as the psychodynamic approach. Another practitioner, Copson, outlined some principles for profiling which include being custom made, interactive and reflexive. By following these principles, the profile should include advice that is unique and not from a stereotype, should be easy to understand for all levels of intelligence, and all elements in the profile should influence one another.
The Scientific approach relies heavily on the multivariate analysis of behaviors and any other information from the crime scene that could lead to the offender's characteristics or psychological processes. According to this approach, elements of the profile are developed by comparing the results of the analysis to those of previously caught offenders.
Wilson, Lincon and Kocsis list three main paradigms of profiling: diagnostic evaluation, crime scene analysis, and investigative psychology.
Ainsworth
identified four: clinical profiling (synonymous with diagnostic evaluation), typological profiling (synonymous with crime scene analysis), investigative psychology, and geographical profiling.
Five steps in profiling include: One- Analyzing the criminal act and comparing it to similar crimes in the past. Two- An in-depth analysis of the actual crime scene, Three- Considering the victim's background and activities for possible motives and connections, Four- Considering other possible motives. Five- Developing a description of the possible offender that can be compared with previous cases.
One type of criminal profiling is referred to as linkage analysis. Gerard N. Labuschagne defines linkage analysis as "a form of behavioral analysis that is used to determine the possibility of a series of crimes as having been committed by one offender."
Gathering many aspects of the offender's crime pattern such as
modus operandi
A ''modus operandi'' (often shortened to M.O.) is someone's habits of working, particularly in the context of business or criminal investigations, but also more generally. It is a Latin phrase, approximately translated as "mode (or manner) of op ...
(MO), ritual or fantasy-based behaviors exhibited, and the signature of the offender, help to establish a basis for a linkage analysis. An offender's modus operandi is the habits or tendencies during the killing of the victim. An offender's signature is the unique similarities in each of the kills. Mainly, linkage analysis is used when physical evidence, such as
DNA, cannot be collected.
Labuschagne states that in gathering and incorporating these aspects of the offender's crime pattern, investigators must engage in five assessment procedures: One- Obtaining data from multiple sources. Two- Reviewing the data and identifying significant features of each crime across the series. Three- Classifying the significant features as either modus operandi or ritualistic. Four- Comparing the combination of modus operandi and ritual or fantasy-based features across the series to determine if a signature exists. Five- Compiling a written report highlighting the findings.
FBI method
There are six stages to developing a criminal profile: profiling inputs, decision process models, crime assessment, criminal profiling, investigation, and apprehension.
The FBI and BAU tend to study specific categories of crimes such as white collar and serial murder.
History
An Italian psychologist
Cesare Lombroso
Cesare Lombroso (, also ; ; born Ezechia Marco Lombroso; 6 November 1835 – 19 October 1909) was an Italian criminologist, phrenologist, physician, and founder of the Italian School of Positivist Criminology. Lombroso rejected the establis ...
(1835-1909) was a criminologist who attempted to formally classify criminals based on age, gender, physical characteristics, education, and geographic region. When comparing these similar characteristics, he better understood the origin of motivation of criminal behavior, and in 1876, he published the book ''The Criminal Man''. Lombroso studied 383 Italian inmates. Based on his studies, he suggested that there were three types of criminals. There were born criminals, who were degenerates and insane criminals, who suffered from a mental illness. Also, he studied and found specific physical characteristics. A few examples included asymmetry of the face, eye defects and peculiarities, and ears of unusual size, etc.
[Richard N. Kocsis, ]
Applied criminal psychology: a guide to forensic behavioral sciences
', Charles C Thomas Publisher, 2009, pp.7
One of the first offender profiles was assembled by detectives of the
Metropolitan Police
The Metropolitan Police Service (MPS), formerly and still commonly known as the Metropolitan Police (and informally as the Met Police, the Met, Scotland Yard, or the Yard), is the territorial police force responsible for law enforcement and ...
on the personality of
Jack the Ripper, a serial killer who had murdered a series of prostitutes in the 1880s. Police surgeon
Thomas Bond was asked to give his opinion on the extent of the murderer's surgical skill and knowledge.
Bond's assessment was based on his own examination of the most extensively mutilated victim and the post mortem notes from the four previous canonical murders.
In his notes, dated November 10, 1888, Bond mentioned the sexual nature of the murders coupled with elements of apparent
misogyny
Misogyny () is hatred of, contempt for, or prejudice against women. It is a form of sexism that is used to keep women at a lower social status than men, thus maintaining the societal roles of patriarchy. Misogyny has been widely practiced fo ...
and rage. Bond also tried to reconstruct the murder and interpret the behavior pattern of the offender.
Bond's basic profile included that "The murderer must have been a man of physical strength and great coolness and daring... subject to periodic attacks of homicidal and erotic mania. The characters of the mutilations indicate that the man may be in a condition sexually, that may be called
Satyriasis
Hypersexuality is extremely frequent or suddenly increased libido. It is controversial whether it should be included as a clinical diagnosis used by mental healthcare professionals. Nymphomania and satyriasis were terms previously used for the c ...
."
In 1912, a psychologist in
Lackawanna, New York
Lackawanna is a Administrative divisions of New York#City, city in Erie County, New York, Erie County, New York (state), New York, United States, just south of the city of Buffalo, New York, Buffalo in western New York (state), New York State. T ...
delivered a lecture in which he analyzed the unknown murderer of a local boy named Joey Joseph, dubbed "
The Postcard Killer" in the press.
In 1932, Dr. Dudley Schoenfeld gave the authorities his predictions about the personality of
the kidnapper of the Lindbergh baby.
In 1943,
Walter C. Langer
Walter Charles Langer (February 5, 1899 – July 4, 1981) was an American psychoanalysis, psychoanalyst who was best known for preparing a psychological analysis of Adolf Hitler in 1943. Langer studied psychoanalysis at Harvard University, where he ...
developed a profile of
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Nazi Germany, Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his death in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the le ...
that hypothesized the
Nazi
Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in ...
dictator's response to various scenarios, including losing the war. The
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
Office of Strategic Services
The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was the intelligence agency of the United States during World War II. The OSS was formed as an agency of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) to coordinate espionage activities behind enemy lines for all branc ...
asked
William L. Langer
William Leonard Langer (March 16, 1896 – December 26, 1977) was an American historian, intelligence analyst and policy advisor.
He served as chairman of the history department at Harvard University. He was on leave during World War II as h ...
's brother
Walter C. Langer
Walter Charles Langer (February 5, 1899 – July 4, 1981) was an American psychoanalysis, psychoanalyst who was best known for preparing a psychological analysis of Adolf Hitler in 1943. Langer studied psychoanalysis at Harvard University, where he ...
, a psychiatrist, to draw up a profile of Adolf Hitler and hypothesize their response to various scenarios including losing the
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
.
After the World War II,
British psychologist Lionel Haward, while working for the
Royal Air Force
The Royal Air Force (RAF) is the United Kingdom's air and space force. It was formed towards the end of the First World War on 1 April 1918, becoming the first independent air force in the world, by regrouping the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) and ...
police, drew up a list of characteristics which high-ranking war criminals might display. These characteristics were used to identify high-ranking war criminals amongst captured soldiers and airmen.
Offender profiling was first introduced to the FBI in the 1960s, when several classes were taught to the American Society of crime lab directors. There was little public knowledge of offender profiling until publicization with TV. Later films based on the fictional works of author
Thomas Harris that caught the public eye as a profession in particular ''
Manhunter'' (1986) and ''
Silence of the Lambs'' (1991). The fastest development occurred when the
FBI
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic Intelligence agency, intelligence and Security agency, security service of the United States and its principal Federal law enforcement in the United States, federal law enforcement age ...
opened its
training academy, the
Behavioral Analysis Unit, in
Quantico, Virginia. It led to the establishment of the
National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime and the
Violent Criminal Apprehension Program.
James Brussel was a psychiatrist who rose to fame after his profile of New York City's
"Mad Bomber" George Metesky was published in the ''New York Times'' in 1956. The media dubbed him "The Sherlock Holmes of the Couch."
In his 1968 book ''Casebook of a Crime Psychiatrist'', Brussel relates how he predicted that the bomber would wear a buttoned-up
double-breasted suit, but edited out the many incorrect predictions he had made in his profile, claiming he had successfully predicted the bomber would be a Slav who lived in Connecticut, when he had actually predicted he would be "born and educated in Germany," and live in
White Plains, New York
(Always Faithful)
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, subdivision_type1 = U.S. state, State
, su ...
.
In 1964, Brussel profiled the
Boston Strangler
The Boston Strangler is the name given to the murderer of 13 women in the Boston, Massachusetts, area during the early 1960s. The crimes were attributed to Albert DeSalvo based on his confession, details revealed in court during a separate case, ...
for the
Boston Police Department
The Boston Police Department (BPD), dating back to 1854, holds the primary responsibility for law enforcement and investigation within the city of Boston, Massachusetts. It is the oldest municipal police department in the United States. The ...
.
In 1972, after the death of
J. Edgar Hoover
John Edgar Hoover (January 1, 1895 – May 2, 1972) was an American law enforcement administrator who served as the first Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). He was appointed director of the Bureau of Investigation ...
, who was skeptical of psychiatry,
the
Behavioral Science Unit of the FBI was formed by
Patrick Mullany
Patrick Joseph Mullany (March 18, 1935 – September 7, 2016) was an American Federal Bureau of Investigation special agent and instructor at the FBI Academy. He is best known for pioneering the FBI's offender profiling in the 1970s and 1980s w ...
and
Howard Teten
Howard Duane Teten (October 23, 1932 – January 11, 2021) was an American Federal Bureau of Investigation agent and an instructor at the FBI Academy. While in the FBI, he worked in criminal profiling, also known as offender profiling with the h ...
.
Investigations of serial killers
Ted Bundy and the
Green River Killer
Gary Leon Ridgway (born February 18, 1949), also known as the Green River Killer, is an American serial killer and sex offender. He was initially convicted of 48 separate murders. As part of his plea bargain, another conviction was added, brin ...
were performed in 1974 by
Robert Keppel
Robert David Keppel (June 15, 1944 – June 14, 2021) was an American law enforcement officer and detective. He was also an associate professor at the University of New Haven and Sam Houston State University. Keppel was known for his contribut ...
and psychologist
Richard Walter. They went on to develop the four subtypes of violent crime and the Hunter Integrated Telemetry System (HITS) database which compiled characteristics of violent crime for research.
At the FBI's BSU,
Robert Ressler and
John Douglas began an informal series of ad hoc interviews with 36 convicts starting in early 1978.
Douglas and Ressler later created a typology of sexually motivated violent offenders and formed the
National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime.
The March 1980 issue of the ''
FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin
The ''FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin'' has been published monthly since 1932 by the FBI ''Law Enforcement Communication Unit'', with articles of interest to state and local law enforcement personnel. First published in 1932 as ''Fugitives Wanted b ...
'' invited local police to request profiles from the FBI.
An article in the April 1980 issue, "The Lust Murderer," introduced the dichotomy of "organized" and "disorganized" offenders.
The August 1985 issue described a third, "mixed" category.
In 1985, Dr.
David Canter
David Victor Canter (born 5 January 1944) is a psychologist. He began his career as an architectural psychologist studying the interactions between people and buildings, publishing and providing consultancy on the designs of offices, schools, ...
in the United Kingdom profiled
"Railway Rapists" John Duffy and David Mulcahy.
David Canter assisted police detectives from the mid-1980s to an offender who had carried out a series of serious attacks, but Canter saw the limitations of offender profiling – in particular, the subjective, personal opinion of a psychologist. He and a colleague coined the term
investigative psychology and began trying to approach the subject from what they saw as a more scientific point of view.
The
Crime Classification Manual
''Crime Classification Manual: A Standard System for Investigating and Classifying Violent Crimes'' (1992) is a text on the classification of violent crimes by John E. Douglas, Ann W. Burgess, Allen G. Burgess and Robert K. Ressler. The publicatio ...
was published in 1992, and introduced the term "criminal investigative analysis."
In 1999, The percentage of accurate criminal profilers was only estimated to be at 21%,
whereas in 2020 the accuracy was estimated to be at 86%.
Popularity
Profiling has continuously gotten more
accurate throughout the years. In the year 2008, only 42% of cases were solved using criminal profiling. In 2019 the FBI was able to solve 56% of the cases that were not solved back in the year 2008.
Profiling as an investigative tool has a high level of acceptance among both the general public and police.
In the United States, between 1971 and 1981, the FBI had only profiled cases on 192 occasions. By 1986, FBI profilers were requested in 600 investigations in a single year. By 1996, 12 FBI profilers were applying profiling to approximately 1,000 cases per year.
In the United Kingdom, 29 profilers provided 242 instances of profiling advice between 1981 and 1994, its usage increasing steadily over that period.
The usage of profiling has been documented in
Sweden
Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden,The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names states that the country's formal name is the Kingdom of SwedenUNGEGN World Geographical Names, Sweden./ref> is a Nordic country located on ...
,
Finland
Finland ( fi, Suomi ; sv, Finland ), officially the Republic of Finland (; ), is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It shares land borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of B ...
,
New Zealand
New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...
,
South Africa
South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring countri ...
,
Germany
Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...
,
Canada
Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...
,
Ireland
Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe, north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel (Grea ...
,
Malaysia
Malaysia ( ; ) is a country in Southeast Asia. The federation, federal constitutional monarchy consists of States and federal territories of Malaysia, thirteen states and three federal territories, separated by the South China Sea into two r ...
,
Russia
Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia, Northern Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the ...
,
Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe (), officially the Republic of Zimbabwe, is a landlocked country located in Southeast Africa, between the Zambezi and Limpopo Rivers, bordered by South Africa to the south, Botswana to the south-west, Zambia to the north, and Mozam ...
, and the
Netherlands
)
, anthem = ( en, "William of Nassau")
, image_map =
, map_caption =
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.
Surveys of police officers in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada have found an overwhelming majority consider profiling to be useful.
A 2007 meta-analysis of existing research into offender profiling noted that there was "a notable incongruity between
rofiling'slack of empirical foundation and the degree of support for the field."
Profiling's continued popularity has been speculatively attributed to broad use of anecdotes and testimonials, a focus on correct predictions over the number of incorrect ones, ambiguous profiles benefiting from the Barnum effect, and the popular appeal of the fantasy of a sleuth with deductive powers like
Hercule Poirot and
Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes () is a fictional detective created by British author Arthur Conan Doyle. Referring to himself as a " consulting detective" in the stories, Holmes is known for his proficiency with observation, deduction, forensic science and ...
.
Notable profilers
Notable profilers include
Roy Hazelwood, who profiled sexual predators;
Ernst Gennat
Ernst August Ferdinand Gennat (1 January 1880 – 20 August 1939) was director of the Berlin criminal police. He worked under three political systems in his 30-year career as one of the most gifted and successful criminologists in the German ...
, a German criminologist, who developed an early profiling scheme for the police of Berlin;
Walter Charles Langer, who predicted Hitler's behavior and eventual suicide;
Howard Teten
Howard Duane Teten (October 23, 1932 – January 11, 2021) was an American Federal Bureau of Investigation agent and an instructor at the FBI Academy. While in the FBI, he worked in criminal profiling, also known as offender profiling with the h ...
, who worked on the case of
Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination; and
John E. Douglas
John Edward Douglas (born ) is an American retired special agent and unit chief in the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). He was one of the first criminal profilers and has written books on criminal psychology.
Early life a ...
, who worked on a wave of
child murders in Atlanta in the 1980s.
According to the BAU the probability of a profiler being used as "expert testimony" in court and leading to a guilty verdict is 85%.
There is a difference between the hard sciences and the social sciences related to testimony and evidence in the courtroom. Some experts contend that offender profiling should not be used in court until such processes can be reliably validated, but as seen, it is still used successfully to this day.
The historical roots of criminal profiling in the United States and Europe have been discussed elsewhere (1). Many European countries have now developed their own approaches to criminal profiling and established specialized academic research institutions and trained police units (1,6), for
example, the German Bundeskriminalamt (7,8), implementing the first quality standards in 2003 (9,10), as well as Austria (11), Scandinavia (12), and the United Kingdom (13). Switzerland has only recently adopted ViCLAS, the computerized Violent Crime Linkage Analysis System, and is now training its own case analysis specialists (1,14,15)
Research
In a review of the literature by Eastwood et al. (2006),
one of the studies noted, Pinizzotto and Finkel (1990),
showed that trained criminal profilers did not do any better than non-profilers in producing an accurate profile. A 2000 study also showed that profilers were not significantly better at creating a profile than any other participating groups.
A study showed there is an 83% success rate in criminal profiling. Looking at research from 2019-2020 regarding cases that had no real evidence pointing to anyone, and 83% of the time profilers were able to help assist in cases that lead to an arrest. Surveys of police officers in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada have found an overwhelming majority consider profiling to be useful.
1A 2007 meta-analysis of existing research into offender profiling noted that there was "a notable incongruity between
rofiling'slack of empirical foundation and the degree of support for the field."
2
Profiling's continued popularity has been speculatively attributed to broad use of anecdotes and testimonials, a focus on correct predictions over the number of incorrect ones, ambiguous profiles benefiting from the Barnum effect, and the popular appeal of the fantasy of a sleuth with deductive powers like Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes.
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A survey of statements made in offender profiles done for major cases from 1992 to 2001 found that "72% included repetition of the details of what occurred in the offence (factual statements already known by the police), references to the profiler’s competence
..or caveats about using the material in the investigation." Over 80% of the remaining statements, which made claims about the offender's characteristics, gave no justification for their conclusion.
A 2003 study which asked two different groups of police to rate how accurately a profile matched a description of the apprehended offender, with one group given a description of a completely fabricated offender instead of the real one, found that the profile was rated equally accurate in both cases.
There is a lack of clear, quantifiable evidence of a link between crime scene actions (A) and offender characteristics (C), a necessary supposition of the A to C paradigm proposed by Canter (1995).
A 2002 review by Alison et al. concluded, "The notion that particular configurations of demographic features can be predicted from an assessment of particular configurations of specific behaviors occurring in short-term, highly traumatic situations seems an overly ambitious and unlikely possibility. Thus, until such inferential processes can be reliably verified, such claims should be treated with great caution in investigations and should be entirely excluded from consideration in court."
See also
*
Criminology
Criminology (from Latin , "accusation", and Ancient Greek , ''-logia'', from λόγος ''logos'' meaning: "word, reason") is the study of crime and deviant behaviour. Criminology is an interdisciplinary field in both the behavioural and so ...
*
Forensic profiling
*
Forensic psychology
*
Presumption of guilt
A presumption of guilt is any presumption within the criminal justice system that a person is guilty of a crime, for example a presumption that a suspect is guilty unless or until proven to be innocent.
Such a presumption may legitimately aris ...
*
Racial profiling
*
Residential Burglary Expert System
*
Statistical correlations of criminal activity
References
Cited works and further reading
*
* Canter, David; Youngs, Donna (2008). ''Principles of Geographical Offender Profiling''. New York: Ashgate Publishing.
* Douglas, John; Olshaker, Mark (1997). ''Journey Into Darkness: The FBI's Premier Investigator Penetrates the Minds and Motives of the Most Terrifying Serial Killers''. London: Arrow Books.
*
*
*
External links
Criminal Investigative Research and Analysis (CiR&A) Group: Current research on evidence-based behavioural investigative practice in police investigationsSwiss scientific research site on criminal profiling*
ttps://web.archive.org/web/20071017202048/http://faculty.ncwc.edu/TOConnor/428/428lect01.htm History of Criminal Profiling – with links to other sitesOffender Profiling: An Introduction to the Sociopsychological Analysis of Violent Crime Dangerous Minds: Criminal profiling made easy, by Malcolm Gladwell
{{DEFAULTSORT:Offender Profiling
1888 establishments in England
Criminal investigation
English inventions
Forensic psychology
Law enforcement techniques
Pseudoscience