Myles Cook, 2006

A discussion of methods of offender profiling and its effectiveness in law enforcement By Myles Cook Introduction
Crime can be considered one of the scourges of a civilised society and the apprehension of criminals is of paramount importance if said society is to prosper and nurture a sense of security within its constituent population, however, trying to find a perpetrator within the general population would be like trying to find a needle in a haystack were it not for the discipline of offender profiling with its ability to narrow the search parameters for the appropriate law enforcement agencies. The creation of an offender profile can be an invaluable tool in tracking down a criminal, however, it would be infeasible to build a profile for every minor offence that has been committed therefore offender profiling is reserved for crimes such as rape, arson and murder especially if they are serial in nature. In this paper, we shall look at three of the methods of offender profiling FBI profiling, geographic profiling and the British discipline of investigative psychology. We shall also look at the assets and pitfalls of each method and the factors which influence the creation of a profile before discussing the effectiveness of the role of the profiler.

Finding Patterns in Chaos

FBI profiling the art of subjective intuition

This method of profiling falls within the clinical approach which looks at the unconscious psychological processes that act upon the offender before, during and after the perpetration of the offence thereby enabling a profiler to build up a psychological picture of the type of person who would be the most likely offender. The first step in creating this type of profile is the data assimilation stage during which the profiler will collect the relevant data from police reports, photographs of the crime scene and the results of post mortem and forensic examinations from which the profiler can make a crime scene classification which is the second step. Crime scenes can be classified as either organised or disorganised which gives the starting point for determining the broad initial snapshot of the offenders psychological state at the time of the offence and therefore the type of person they are likely to be in their usual lives. A disorganised murder scene will tend to have lots of forensic evidence and will display the offenders lack of control during the offence indicating that the perpetrator was disorganised both at the time of the offence and in general leading to a tendency not to plan the crime, be socially and sexually incompetent, unskilled and have very little self-control over changes in mood. The organised murder scene, on the other hand, tends to show evidence of planning reflected in a lack of obvious evidence at the scene leading to the conclusion that the perpetrator will be a highly controlled person who is sexually and socially competent, in a skilled occupation of some kind, intelligent and, more than likely, lives with a partner of some description. The third step in the creation of the profile is that of crime reconstruction in which the profiler generates a hypothesis based on the information thus far found which tries to build up a picture of what happened during the offence including such things as the sequence of events and the behaviour of the victim as well as considering the modus operandi of the offender.

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The final step in creating this type of profile is the generation of the profile that involves taking the information gathered thus far and building a hypothesis on the habits, behaviours and physical characteristics of the perpetrator and the most likely demographic group to which they belong. As has been illustrated above, FBI profiling is a top-down approach to profiling with the crime scene distinction coming first and the evidence backing up that assertion coming second leading some commentators to believe that profiler bias may affect the creation of the profile with evidence which contradicts the classification being ignored or, at the very least, marginalised. A major aspect of this type of profiling is that it is a highly intuitive activity which is both an advantage and a disadvantage. On the one hand, the use of intuition allows for experiential knowledge to take a part in the creation of the profile and can allow a profiler to see patterns in a series of crimes that a less intuitive person may miss, however, intuition is highly subjective and may lead a profiler to attribute his or her own biased views to the offender which would eliminate the usefulness of the created profile. Major disadvantages of this method are that it is based on an extremely small database created by interviews with captured offenders who may have lied about aspects of their upbringing and it is mainly used only on the most extreme crimes so is of little help in the day to day work of the law enforcement agencies. It is also hard to generalise the findings of one investigation to another due to the fact that a profile generates a single case study, however, despite these disadvantages the method does appear to work.

Geographic profiling mapping the way to a solution

This method of profiling bridges the clinical and experimental approaches and is thus able to investigate the underlying causes of the crime whilst also providing a source of statistics which will stand up to scrutiny based as they are on the experimental model. The way in which this method differs from FBI profiling is that it focuses more on the locations in which a series of crimes takes place than looking at the crimes themselves to reveal the type of characteristics an offender will exhibit. By mapping the crime locations accurately, it is also possible to guide law enforcement agencies to the most likely areas in which an offender may live or potentially target allowing the police to concentrate their investigative efforts more effectively. Geographic profiles are not the first step in the investigative process, however, and only really come into play after the use of traditional investigative methods, analysis of collected data to determine only those cases that are connected and the preparation of a psychological profile. One of the main concerns of this method is what is known as the distance to K which is a good indicator of where an offender may live as it is a fact of life that people travel fairly short distances to do certain things and a great deal of journey to crime research confirms the fact that criminals tend to commit their crimes fairly close to home, however, a phenomenon called distance-decay proves that offenders will rarely commit crimes on their doorstep and the closer to home they are the number of offences will decrease. Rossmo (1995) created a computer program to help with geographic profiling called criminal geographic targeting or CGT in which the gathered information is plotted on a map called the jeopardy surface and the computer calculates the distance-decay and distance to K variables to create an overlaying series of multi-coloured areas showing the most likely areas of jeopardy.

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This method of profiling takes into account the hunting style of the perpetrator, the general area in which the crimes take place, the demographic statistics of that area and all the arterial routes in the vicinity of the crimes to create a picture of the type of offender, racial group and the mental barriers that may be affecting the criminal. Another variable to consider when creating a geographic profile is that there may be more than one location attached to each incidence of a crime, for instance, a victim may be found in a different location to where he or she was killed, and there can be as many as four different locations attributed to a crime although the profiler may not have information on all of the locations. The information on crime locations that is known, however, can provide an insight into whether the offender is organised or disorganised and how they search for their victims. Information on the victim is also taken into account when creating a geographic profile including any information on the victims enemies and their social life, called the target backcloth, which may provide a means to narrow the search for the operational area of the perpetrator. The way in which a perpetrator hunts for his victims provides a great deal of information about the type of individual they are and there are four distinct types of hunting behaviour that have been recorded the hunter, the poacher, the troller and the trapper. Hunters tend to be organised, based from home and are limited to the town or city in which they commit their crimes whereas poachers commit their crimes away from their home and tend to be commuters looking for their victims in the areas in which they socialise or work. Trollers are individuals who are already criminal types with a tendency to fantasise about the violent crime they wish to commit but will only act out their fantasy if they come across the type of victim they want making them the most opportunistic of offenders whereas trappers tend to hold a position of trust or authority in the community who will be socially competent and will tend to manipulate the victim. An additional dimension to the hunter type is the method of attack they use of which there are three the raptor, the stalker and the ambusher all of which can provide more information on the type of characteristics exhibited by the perpetrator. The raptor tends to kill upon finding his victim while the stalker builds up to their attack whereas the ambusher lies in wait before pouncing. Contrary to FBI profiling, geographic profiling is a bottom-up approach to profiling where the evidence is found before the conclusion is reached which makes the conclusions less open to attack on the grounds of profiler bias. The main advantage of this method of offender profiling is that it enables law enforcement agencies to allocate their resources more effectively and economically by covering only those areas at risk from the offender thus saving time and money in the search for the perpetrator whilst building a picture of the type of individual the law enforcement agencies should be targeting. An example of this methods main advantage is provided by the case of Wayne Williams in which a researcher called Dettlinger (1983) noticed that Williams tended to commute along certain routes enabling him to advise police to stakeout places along that route. The drawback of geographic profiling is that it is only as good as the information that the profiler is given and the fewer crime locations the profiler has to work with, the weaker the pattern to be found and the less helpful the profile is likely to be.

Investigative psychology the statistical approach

This method of profiling falls within the experimental approach and was created by David Canter as a branch of applied psychology and takes as its focus the

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various psychological theories which help to define how individuals behave and then apply them to the task of building a profile of the perpetrator. The concerns Canter had when producing his method of profiling were about the type of crime a person may or is likely to commit and wishing to understand how their behaviour at the crime mirrors their behaviour in their everyday life and together with Heritage in 1990 studied 66 sexual assaults perpetrated by 27 different offenders. Certain characteristics were found, during their research, to be more frequent than others and could therefore be considered as a general template for that particular crime whereas the less frequent characteristics signified the distinctive signature of the particular offender who was committing the crimes giving an idea of the perpetrators behaviour in everyday life. The characteristics of a crime are plotted on a grid under the headings of sadism, aggression, intimacy and criminality with the most common being towards the centre of the grid which is considered the crime itself and the least common further away from the centre. This process is called small space (or smallest space) analysis.

Figure 1: The statistical model based on the data of House (1997).

House found that offenders who exhibit a high degree of sadistic characteristics during a crime are less likely to have a history of conviction and tend to be an organised, intelligent fantasist whereas the more characteristics from the criminality group indicates that there may well be some previous criminal convictions in the offenders past and is more likely to be found in a search through police records. Similar insights can be found with offenders who exhibited a lot of intimacy characteristics who are more likely to be involved in property crimes and have convictions for deception and offenders who show a lot of aggression tend to show no time for deception. From small space analysis it is possible to determine the theme of a crime (instrumental opportunistic, instrumental cognitive or expressive impulsive) that is determined from the characteristics noted at the crime scene which then indicates the type of previous convictions an offender might have, whether the

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offender knew the victim and similar information that may help narrow down the list of suspects for the law enforcement agencies. Despite Canters dislike of the FBI profilers apparent disregard for the rigorous scientific basis he applies to profiling, the two methods are not that dissimilar as both categorise the offender in some way they just use different language in naming the categories. Some commentators say, however, that Canter has gone too far to the other end of the spectrum by relying on his rigorous scientific method without taking into account at least some degree of clinical intuitiveness due to his dislike of the unscientific nature of the FBI approach. The advantages of this method are that, being based on the experimental, scientific model, the conclusions can stand up to scrutiny and can be performed at any time with the extra advantage being that this type of profile can be created without the need for any special knowledge on the part of the profiler, in fact, police analysts perform a similar function. The advantages of this method of profiling must, of course, be weighed against the disadvantages inherent in using such a rigorous experimental model which are as scientists tend to focus on the averages, they tend to miss the extremes which in this case are probably the most important aspects. A disadvantage this method shares with FBI profiling is that it is based on a small database of previous cases which may limit its effectiveness although this must be weighed against its ability to cover a wider range of crimes than the FBI method.

Factors influencing the creation of a profile

Apart from the differences between clinical and experimental approaches to profiling, it has to be recognised that profiles are created by individuals about individuals with information provided by individuals all of which can be coloured by the differences inherent in being an individual. Differences in the type of knowledge one possesses can be an influencing factor in the creation of a profile as it requires tacit (experiential) knowledge to be able to create an FBI or statistical profile which requires use of intuitive insight to see the patterns emerging from the information the profiler is given whereas geographic profiling is a demonstration of formal knowledge that can be learnt therefore having the wrong type of knowledge for the type of profile you are building can result in errors. One of the major disadvantages of all three of the methods we have looked at is that it can be problematic when transplanting them from the country of their origin to other countries which may not have the same cultural or geographic makeup, for instance, geographic profiling originally came from Canada which has at least some geographical similarity to the US or Britain, however, the same method would be harder to apply to certain African countries with its different geographical makeup. African culture would also have an effect on the ability of FBI profiling or investigative psychology to provide an effective profile without first adapting the methods to that specific country due to the radically different cultures. Another factor that can affect the creation of a profile is the problem with gathering the information needed which can require the use of eyewitness testimony that can itself be influenced by a number of factors. Testimony from a highly aroused witness can be rather vague because they are less likely to be able to take everything that is going on around them in and there is the phenomenon of weapon focus which refers to the narrowing of an individuals perceptions to all but a single item, such as a weapon, during a crime.

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Eyewitnesses are also subject to forgetting and the inability to gauge time accurately when involved in quick crimes. Interview techniques can provide differing standards of information depending on the witness or offenders motivation to remember, for instance, if an offender feels the need to recapture the event, the likelihood of the informations accuracy is greater than if he or she is merely fulfilling an objective based on a previous experience in which it is more likely there will be a number of errors in the recollection of the events due to reconstruction. To combat some of the problems involved with interviewing offenders, two types of technique are used depending on the one the information gatherer feels would achieve the best results the constrained and the unconstrained. The former technique gathers information by asking specific questions to obtain specific information whereas the unconstrained technique involves flattery and allowing the perpetrator to talk at length about the crime which is more likely to be more accurate than asking specific questions.

Conclusion
As we have seen, there are more than one type of profiling technique and various factors that can influence the creation of a profile but how effective is the role of the profiler? Some research has been conducted in user satisfaction with profiling by Gudjonsson and Copson (1997) in which they found that only 3% of detections were attributed to profile analysis, however, the users being asked were senior investigating officers on particular crimes who would be less inclined to attribute success to the profilers work rather than good old fashioned police work. Despite this apparently low success rate, however, senior police officers view the work of profilers in a positive light even when the profile was found to be inaccurate (Alison, Smith and Morgan (2003)). Errors can obviously be made but this is the case with all types of research and the fact that geographic profiling has been evaluated by the National Technology Alliance as being useful to the US army in its War Against Terror goes some way to showing the usefulness of the technique and with the positive light in which profiling in general is viewed, even when inaccurate, the effectiveness of the role of the profiler cannot be denied.

References
Howitt, D (2006) Introduction to Forensic and Criminal Psychology 2nd Edition, Pearson, Harlow www.nta.org/IAE/Geoprofiling05.pdf Class handouts

Acknowledgement
Figure 1 from Introduction to Forensic and Criminal Psychology 2nd Edition, Pearson, Harlow