Offender Profiling

What is offender profiling:

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  • Behavioural and psychological investigative tool

  • Used by the police and professional profilers when investigating serious crimes (i.e murder) to accurately predict / generate a hypothesis about the probable characteristics of an offender (i.e age, background, occupation etc.), narrowing down the list of suspects

How is an offender profile built:

  • Compiling a profile will involve:

    • Scrutiny from the crime scene

    • Analysis of witness reports

    • Identifying trends in the location of crime scenes, victimology (who they like to target), motives etc.

Top-down profiling:

  • Top-down approach, developed by the FBI’s Behavioural Science Unit in the 1970s, originated in America

  • Based on interviews with 36 sexually motivated killers, including Ted Bundy, Ed Kemper, Richard Stack and Charles Manson

  • The data identified two offender categories

    • Organised

    • Disorganised - each with distinct characteristics

  • Profilers use this typology to match crime scene evidence and witness accounts to one category, enabling predictions about the offender’s characteristics, traits, and behaviours

  • This distinction is based on the idea that serious offenders have signature / distinct ways of working (modus operandi - motive) and these generally correlate with a set of social and psychological characteristics that relate to the individual.

Organised offender characteristics:

  • Offender:

    • Offender plans the crime in advance and maintains a high level of control during the crime

    • Tend to be above average intelligence (skilled professional occupations), and socially and sexually competent (usually with a romantic partner and kids).

  • Victim:

    • The victim is deliberately targeted

    • Rapist / killer has a ‘type’

    • Useful for victimology and prevention.

  • Crime scene:

    • There is little or no evidence left at the crime scene

Disorganised offender characteristics:

  • Offender:

    • Offender tends to have a lower IQ, unskilled / unemployed, sexual and social dysfunction with failed relationships

    • Often live alone and close to the area the crime took place in

  • Victim:

    • Random victims

    • Can make it more difficult to establish a motive or victimology.

  • Crime scene:

    • Crime scene reflects the impulsiveness of the act: the body is still at the crime scene and has little / no control.

    • Little evidence of planning. Spontaneous acts of violence.

Steps in creating an offender profile:

  • 1) Data assimilation:

    • Profiler reviews evidence (photographs, pathology of victim, witness reports)

  • 2) Crime scene classification:

    • Classify as organised or disorganised

  • 3) Crime reconstruction:

    • Hypothesis in terms of sequences of events and behaviour of the victim

  • 4) Profile generation:

    • Hypothesis is related to the likely offender and characteristics (age, physical characteristics, behaviour).