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Criminal Profiling

Criminal profiling has captured the public's attention over the last two decades. Indeed, profilers have become the detectives of choice for many modern-day mystery novels. The criminal profiler is often portrayed as a “mindhunter” or a doctor who diagnoses crimes and discovers their origin, the unknown and feared perpetrator. The technique of profiling has been added to the criminal investigator's toolbox when dealing with multiple crimes thought to be committed by the same offender.

Criminal profiling has a number of aliases. It is often referred to simply as “profiling,” but may also be known as “psychological profiling,” “criminal personality profiling,” and “behavioral crime scene analysis” (Anon 1995). The Federal Bureau of Investigation has begun to refer to profiling as “criminal investigative analysis” (Homant and Kennedy 1998). In Europe, criminal profiling is often referred to as “offender profiling” (Jackson and Bekerian 1997). Criminal profiling is, of course, completely different than racial profiling, which involves the targeting of specific racial or ethnic groups as elements of interest in criminal investigations.

Definitions of Profiling

What is criminal profiling? One profiler has described profiling this way:

Violent crime scenes tell a story—a story written by the offender, the victim and the unique circumstances of their interaction. Behavioral “clues” left at a crime scene can provide insights not only into the type of person responsible for the crime, but also his or her motivation, lifestyle, fantasies, victim selection process, and pre- and post-offense behavior. (O'Toole 1999: 44)

The profile paints a picture of the type of person who would be likely to have carried out the crime or crimes in question.

The FBI formally defines profiling as “a technique for identifying the major personality and behavioral characteristics of an individual based upon an analysis of the crimes he or she has committed. The profiler's skill is in recognizing the crime scene dynamics that link various criminal personality types who commit similar crimes” (Douglas et al. 1986: 405). Thus, a profile is like a biographical sketch without a name attached to it: The typical profile might include details such as age, race or ethnic background, occupational skill, marital status, education level, previous encounters with police, characteristics of past and present family life (including childhood family relationships), identifying habits (e.g., whether the offender smokes, or his or her typical manner of dress), vehicles owned, and whether or not the offender is mentally ill (Anon 1995). The depth or detail that the biographical sketch includes will be related to the amount of behavioral and other evidence that can be gathered by the police investigation, and to the ability of the profiler (Douglas and Olshaker 1998).

However, very recently, even this somewhat unified definition of profiling has been challenged. Brent Turvey has suggested that there are actually two types of criminal profiling. The first, the type that he identifies as the typical or usual profile, is inductive profiling. Inductive profiling, he suggests, is based on averages. It uses statistical inference to produce profiles. The inductive profile is like a template that is produced by considering similar crimes and the offenders who perpetrated them. The premise of inductive profiling is that by examining known offenders and their characteristics, one can develop a checklist or standard to which unknown offenders can be compared (Turvey 1999).

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