Offender Profiling and Investigative Psychology: Profiling criminal activities
Crime fascinates and disgusts a great number of people. Many people are interested in true crime documentaries and programs on offender profiling. The main reason is that we want to understand why people do what they do, we are social beings and understanding each other is imperative. Most people would never commit a crime such as burglary, violence, murder, or rape so people have a natural fascination to try to find out what is different about the person who could do this.
When it comes to Offender Profiling many people do not fully understand the process, or believe that an investigator can examine a crime scene and be able to tell something about the offender. This is partly due to a plethora of fictional films and programs on the subject such as Silence of the Lambs or Cracker.
In the late 1970’s the FBI set out to determine whether it was possible to develop a system which could predict offender characteristics based on information available at the crime scene. John Douglas was instrumental in this process and set about gathering information from detectives about offenders based on their experience. Extensive interviews were carried out with 36 serial murderers in an attempt to determine the behaviours during crimes and the characteristics of the offenders. The purpose of this was to provide law enforcement with the most likely personality characteristics and demographic information in order to reduce the list of possible suspects, thus reducing the amount of time spent investigating unlikely suspects.
As a result of this, the behaviours of violent offenders and serial murderers were classified as ‘Organized’ or ‘Disorganized’. This enabled investigators to predict the likely personality characteristics and demographic information of the offender. However, this approach has been criticized for its validity and reliability.
One of the critics of this approach is David Canter, a social psychologist. Canter coined the term Investigative Psychology in an attempt to move away from a non-scientific approach of the FBI. Investigative psychology uses established and tested psychological principles to examine crime.
Investigative Psychology makes logical inferences which investigative activities not only the preparation of ‘profiles’. Investigative Psychology is a problem solving approach which uses inferences and is vigorously tested using various statistical methods. The term ‘Investigative Psychology’ covers a broad range of areas relating to crime and law enforcement. These areas include (but are not limited to): interviewing methods; eye witness testimony; detecting deception; geographical profiling; profiling criminal actions of arsonist, murderers, burglars, rapists, terrorists and many more.
This approach links crime scene behaviours to offender characteristics in a similar way to the FBI approach and would reduce the amount of possible suspects. However, this is done using careful research methods and statistical techniques to determine the likely characteristics of the offender.
There are many good books and websites on Offender Profiling. Below is a list of some suggested further material.
Books:
Offender Profiling and Crime Analysis (2001) Peter B. Ainsworth.
Investigative Psychology : Offender Profiling and the analysis of criminal action (2009) David Canter & Donna Youngs.
Websites:
Davidcanter.com
Psychologytoday.com
Journal articles:
Canter, D. (2004). Offender Profiling and Investigative Psychology. Journal of Investigative Psychology and Offender Profiling, 1: 1–15.
Alison, L., Bennell, C., Mokros, A., & Ormerod, D. (2002). The Personality Paradox in Offender Profiling: A Theoretical Review of the Processes Involved in Deriving Background Characteristics From Crime Scene Actions. Psychology, Public Policy, and the Law, 8(1): 115–135.
Canter, D., Alison, L.J., Alison, E., & Wentink, N. (2004). The Organized/ Disorganized Typology of Serial Murder: Myth or Model? Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 10(3): 293–320.
