Offender Profiling Flashcards
What is offender profiling? 📝
Identifying characteristics of a perpetrator of a crime based on analysis of the nature 🏃🏽 and the manner🙅🏽 in which it was committed
What indicates aspects of a criminals’ personality?
Their choice of actions before, during and after the crime
What are the predominant crimes we can profile?
Mostly contact crimes
What is the basic premise of offender profiling?
What + how + when + where + why = WHO
What principles are used to profile an offender?
Behavioural, correlational and psychodynamic principles
What are the core objectives of offender profiling?
Reduce the scope of an investigation, reduce the problem of an information overload, permit strategic allocation of resources, assist in linkage of crimes, predict future offences, ease the burden of public fear, media interest and political pressure
Goals of offender profiling
Social and psychological assessment of offenders
Core variables to know about offender
Age, gender, race, employment, marital status, sexual maturity, religion, reaction to police questioning
What is a psychological evaluation of offender belongings used for
To aid understanding of how certain possessions tie the suspect to the crime
What does psychological evaluation of offender belongings predict?
What items a suspect likely to have in their possession, to build case for prosecution
Why would psychological evaluation of offender belongings be invaluable at trial?
Can ultimately lead to the conviction of the perpetrator
What is crime linkage analysis?
Investigative decision process of deciding whether 2 or more crimes are committed by same offender
Preferred type of evidence in linkage analysis
Hard evidence, or in absence of this- observable behaviour
What is linkage blindness
Don’t know crime is committed by same person (could have prevented victimisation Ghubin et al (1997)
2 reasons for crime linkage (Santtila et al, 2005)
Reduce number of potential suspects, accumulate evidence concerning a particular offender
Process of crime linkage
Look at offence behaviours then compare to relevant for similar offences
Assumptions of behavioural crime linkage
Consistency (similarity across related crime scenes) and variability (what random set of behaviours they used)
What technology is the gold standard to facilitate linkage by (Collins et al., 1998)
Violent Crime Linkage Analysis System (ViClas)
Critical evaluation of computerised systems (Bernell et al., 2012): 4 assumptions
Data in systems must be coded reliably
Data are accurate
Serial offenders exhibit consistent but distinctive patterns of behaviour
Analysts have ability to use behaviour to link crimes accurately
Approaches to offender profiling
FBI- Inductive approach, Canter’s signature vs. Modus operandi and geographical profiling
What type of approach is the FBI-inductive approach
Top-down approach
Profiling process (FBI Inductive approach
Data assimilation, crime classification (organised or disorganised) crime reconstruction (hypotheses) and profile generation
Assumptions in FBI inductive approach
Unknown offenders share common characteristics.
Past offenders culturally similar to current offenders (environmental conditions + motivations)
Disorganised Asocial offender
Spontaneous, Unknown, messy, weapon left
How should police interview a disorganised asocial offender
Show empathy, non-threatening, counseller approach, interview them at night
Organised non-social offender
Evidence of planning (body moved, weapon taken), intelligent, controlled mood, charming. After crime volunteers info, anticipates questioning
How should police interview an organised non-social offender?
Direct strategy, aware that answers are usually well-read
Criticisms of FBI inductive approach
Generalises from limited population, lacks theoretical rationale, relies on interviews, failure to compare profiles with actual offenders
Boon and Davis (1992) deductive approach
Get details of crime and build up specific associations between offences and offender characteristics
Deductive methods assumptions
No offender acts without motivation so each offence should be investigated as its own behavioural and motivational existent
Positives of deductive methods
Profiles more specific and reduces investigator bias
Limitation of deductive methods
Time consuming and involves a multi-disciplinary team
Canter’s approach to offender profiling
Inductive and deductive as FBI dichotomy is too simplistic
Canter’s Signature vs Modus operandi
Signature- each crime has their own signature
Modus operandi- dynamic, learned behaviour which changes over time as offender gets more experienced
Geographical profiling (Rossmo, 2000)
Suggests that criminals offend close to their homes e.g. Burgle and rape
Geographical profiling aims
Identify which cases are linked
Predict characteristics
Understand link between offence and location
Geographical profiling preparation
Exam case files, inspect scene and photos, discuss with identifications, analyse the neighbourhood crime stats, study the street
Assumptions in geographical profiling
- individuals construct mental maps of areas they know
- victim location and availability are key to determining where offences will occur
Jeopardy surface in geographical profiling
Computerised analysis of point pattern target sites (produces 3D probability distribution)
Routine activity theory of geographical profiling
A motivated offender, a suitable victim and the absence of a capable guardian
Limitation of routine activity theory
Doesn’t address why offenders commit crimes
Support for geographical profiling
Godwin and Canter (1997): 85% offences lived within circle compassing offences
Koscis and Irwin (1997): arson attacks in AUS
Snook et al (2005): younger travelled shorter distances. Higher IQ travelled further
Search and attack methods in geographical profiling include
Victim and attack search methods
Victim search methods (geographical profiling)
Hunter (search based from home, go out and look)
Poacher (search based on own activity e.g. Business)
Troller (opportunistic)
Trapper (under their control)
3 methods of attack (geographical profiling)
Raptor (Attacks upon encounter)
Stalker (follows victim, then attacks)
Ambusher (entices victim to location, then attacks)
Evaluation of geographical profiling
Canter’s approach similar
However, generalising between EU and USA
2 distinct issues with offender profiling (Petherick, 2005)
Accuracy (would suggest direct relationship between profile and offender) and Utility (waste of resources)
Hazel wood et al (1995) criticism of offender profiling
Only an investigative tool used to narrow down a pool of suspects (not to identify)
What is successful offender profiling?
Number of hits scored by profiles (Jackson et al 1997)
Must assist in decision making process (Rossmo et al., 2000)
Criticism of offender profiling literature (Dowden et al 2007) content analysis
Majority of profiling research are discussion papers and they lack a systematic testing of theories
What assumptions are being tested in offender profiling?
Stability of offender profiling over time, consistency of offender’s behaviour between his criminal/ non criminal domains, associations between crime and background of offender
How accurate is offender profiling? (Holmes, 1989)
- 192 offender profiled cases
- only 17% contributed to the arrests
Criticisms of Holmes (1989)
No control group for comparison, stats techniques not described and most info gained by police
Circle theory of environmental range
(Rossmo, 2000) suggests that criminals offend close to their homes
Three central elements of offender profiling
Produces 8 possible crime location sets
Victim encounter sets suggests the organisation and mobility of offender
Research has shown high consistency in crime set by serial offenders
How useful is offender profiling?
Cops on (1995) found 100% for arson and abduction (but small cases)
Aspects of usefulness of offender profiling (Copson, 1995)
- lead to identification (3%)
- furthered understanding of case/offender (61%)
- reassured officers’ judgements (52%)
- offered structure for interview (5%)
- not useful (17%)
How useful is offender profiling operationally? (Copson, 1995)
83%
Problems with assessing accuracy of offender profiles
Turvey (1999): issue of subjectivity in interpretations, accuracy can only be proven once caught and even when caught not FACTUAL evidence of guilt/innocence.
Villiejoubert and colleagues (2008): cognitive study on how receivers of profiles interpret the claims study details
- 70 ptps
- online questionnaire
- manipulated quantifiers used
Criticism of uncertainty phrases (Collins and Alison, 2002):
- content analysis of 26 profiles by different profilers
- only 54% had uncertainty phrase
However, recently Almond et al (2007) found (unqualified phrases)
Only 18% of claims were unprofiled
Therefore improvement in practice
Villejubert et al (2008) findings
Most can’t be certain of claims: mere levels of probability, need a probability qualifying phrase e.g 60% chance as claims interpreted differently for different people
- verbal as opposed to numerical associated with higher judgements and level of dangerousness- more likely to be thought true
Recommendations of offender profiling (Villejubert et al, 2008)
Need to counterbalance effects in communications (e.g. If dangerous claim is made, reduce a probable to a possible) to make less likely to be thought true
