Introduction
Offender profiling possesses significant untapped potential in the sphere of investigation. The concept is applied by the National Crime Agency to gain insight into the mind of a killer, see things from their perspective, and forecast their future actions. At its core, criminal profiling (also known as offender profiling, crime investigative analysis, and crime scene profiling) is a method of investigating potential offenders by identifying commonalities in their actions based on their profiled traits. Recently, several scientists have questioned the usefulness of criminal profiling due to its weak scientific basis. The field has experienced significant developments and progress since its initial modern application by the psychological community. The report aims to assess the nature and effectiveness of offender profiling, by examining four approaches: diagnostic evaluations, investigative psychology, geographic profiling, and behavioural investigative advice. The report recommends the application of the CRIME framework and evidence-based profiling in understanding the behaviour and characteristics of offenders.
Definitions
The term “offender profiling” refers to the practice of predicting an offender’s likely features by observation, contemplation, and construction based on existing data.
Crighton defines offender profiling as the application of behavioural data to better understand criminal behaviour and make predictions about potential offenders (Crighton, 2021, p.148). He asserts that the activity is accomplished by following a rational procedure that starts with data collected at the crime scene and continues with witness statements and other accessible information to create valuable profiles that allow investigative agencies to conduct less extensive searches.
Fox & Farrington (2018) define offender profiling as an investigative technique mostly utilised by detectives, psychologists, consultants, and scholars to determine an offender’s major psychological, behavioural, and social features using a study of behaviours observed at crime scenes (p.3).
Petherick & Brooks describe criminal profiling as an investigative strategy used to identify perpetrator traits based on behaviour (2021, p.694). They assert that criminal profiling outlines the traits of the probable offender of a specific crime, and logic plays a crucial role in creating coherent justifications concerning offender characteristics.
The FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin defines criminal profiling as the method used in investigations to capture serial killers by examining the characteristics of a crime and drawing conclusions about the perpetrator’s personality (Maarek, 2023, p.3).
Mada & Nurse (2021, p.1) describe criminal profiling as a forensic tool utilised for years to determine an offender’s behavioural tendencies, psychological qualities, demographic data, and geographical variables based on crime statistics and features.
Historical Background
Offender profiling was utilised as far back as the 1880s by the Metropolitan Police to investigate crime scene evidence and apprehend the serial killer, Jack the Ripper. Offender profiling emerged in the 1970s under the supervision of Ressler and Douglas et al. at the FBI Academy in Virginia. Criminal profiling gained traction in 1974 and 1975 after FBI negotiators were taught strategies by Mullany after he successfully handled many high-profile hostage rescue operations. Over the past years, most profiling work relied on anecdotal evidence and unofficial research. In contemporary criminal profiling, the goal is to fill in information gaps by identifying the type of offender who could have committed the crime based on their demographics, biological characteristics, geographic location, behavioural tendencies, and other personal characteristics. Profiling is based on the premise that individuals entering a crime scene inevitably leave traces behind. The technique has been utilised by the FBI’s Behavioural Science Unit and subsequently by the Behavioural Analysis Unit to develop a profile for a criminal.
Types of Offender Profiling
While many practitioners share commonalities in their approach to profile development, there are also notable distinctions. It is now debatable whether they form sufficiently distinct approaches; others argue that the distinctions lie more in the emphasis placed on different steps of the process. Currently, there are several profiling approaches utilised in the UK to investigate criminal behaviour. Some of the offender profiling approaches include:
Diagnostic evaluation
Instead of being a specific profile method, diagnostic evaluations (DE) are more of a catch-all term for the services provided by mental health experts and depend on clinical judgment. According to Yaksic (2020, p.137), diagnostic evaluations are personalised assessments conducted by mental health professionals to determine the potential psychopathology associated with the crime. The most well-known instance of this profiling is the one that psychiatrist Dr. James Brussel produced in 1956 to aid with the ‘Mad Bomber’ case (Petherick & Brooks, 2021, p.699). When profiling first began, diagnostic and clinical procedures were done on an as-needed basis, typically as a component of a more comprehensive package of mental health care. DE profiling is now mostly conducted by specialised police positions instead of broad forensic psychology and psychiatry. According to Fritzon, this type of profiling is effective in examining arsonists, because understanding the motives of such offenders requires the needs theories framework (Petherick, 2009, p.94). Despite being individually tailored, participatory, and self-reflective, diagnostic evaluations lack a standardised technique with a defined theoretical structure.
Investigative psychology
Investigative Psychology (IP) emerged as an area of study in 1990 with an emphasis on establishing an empirical foundation for analysing and comprehending criminal behaviour to enhance crime detection and ensure legal proceedings are suitable (Salfati, 2021, p.54). IP deals with the psychological aspects of all matters about criminal investigation and prosecution. The three main areas of IP include information retrieval, decision-making, and criminal behaviour. Information retrieval revolves around collecting, assessing and analysing written reports and visual materials, such as police files, mental health records, court records, crime scene photos, prison files, and interviews. The decision-making stage is where judgment is made based on the chronological sequence of crime activities. Criminal behaviour stems from establishing a foundation for the deductions crucial to police investigations, emphasising individual differentiation, behavioural consistency, and deductions on offender traits (Salfati, 2021, p.58). Based on IP’s empirical approach that utilises novel data, it is effective in assessing various offences including homicide, sexual assault, arson, burglary, and murder.
Behavioural Investigative Advice
The field of Behavioral Investigative Advice (BIA) aims to provide a wide array of psychological and scientific support to police investigations, such as offender profiling. BIAs provide additional support to senior investigative officers and improve their decision-making in major crime investigations by utilising behavioural science theory, research, and expertise (Petherick & Brooks, 2021, p.701). BIA is an advanced method for criminal profiling, although it can be prone to errors without consistent prioritisation of processes and uniform practice. BIAs possess a combination of psychology expertise and investigative skills, enabling them to analyse each case by reconstructing the crime scene psychologically and comprehending the offender’s behaviour, mentality, historical context, drives, and past and potential future criminal activities (Sigurdardóttir et al., 2023, p.3). This type of profiling is effective in handling different types of crime including murder, equivocal death, sexual offences, animal mutilation, and harassment. The grounds in BIA reports are based on explanation hypotheses where the majority of claims have warrants and backing.
Geographic profiling
Geographical profiling is the method of analysing crime locations to identify where the criminal lives or operates. Its primary role is to prioritise suspects in investigations of repetitive crimes. Geographic profiling is crucial in cases where information about the offender is limited, such as in cybercrime, where perpetrators utilise the Internet to conceal their identities and actions (Bada & Nurse, 2021, p.4). This can be accomplished by recognising the individuals using specific routes at specific times, tracking the movements of perpetrators and victims in crime contexts, and pinpointing temporal and spatial trends in criminal behaviour (especially in serial incidents). Geographic profiling operates under the assumption that crime places are not randomly chosen but exhibit an inherent geographical pattern due to deliberate decision-making by offenders. The approach utilises specialised crime-mapping tools to calculate crime site information and visualise the profile. Current software systems applied in the investigation include CrimeStat, Predator, Rigel, and Dragnet. This profiling is effective in cybercrime activities such as spear phishing and credit card skimming.
Recommendation
The National Crime Agency should expand the use of profiling and incorporate evidence-based aspects and the CRIME framework in investigations. Utilising Evidence-Based Offender Profiling (EBOP) allows profilers to derive accurate and scientifically supported profiles. The goals of this mechanism are to categorise different sorts of crimes and individuals who commit them and to analyse statistics to identify patterns between types of crimes and offenders (Maarek & Darwish, 2023, p.9). This is a method to deduce elements of a criminal’s character based on unresolved cases. Moreover, using the CRIME framework in profiling as a mechanism designed to organise profiles and ensure consistency will help reduce implicit bias in profiling approaches. Standardised categories of the framework are; “Crime scene evaluations, Relevance of research, Investigative or clinical opinion, Methods of investigation, and Evaluation” (Maarek & Darwish, 2023, p.10). It offers a structured framework to enhance the scientific method by establishing a regulated procedure for creating profiles. Application of these two aspects would strengthen offender profiling’s scientific basis and relevance in criminal investigations.
Conclusion
The National Crime Agency must tailor specific offender profiling approaches to specific types of crimes. In the contemporary rapidly changing crime landscape, investigative agencies ought to restructure how they evaluate, assess, and deduce an offender’s behaviour and their linkage to a particular crime scene. The application of evidence-based offender profiling and the CRIME framework will improve offender profiling processes and outcomes. To advance offender profiling, criminal investigation agencies need to adhere to higher scientific standards by integrating logical thinking based on relevant facts and justifications.
References
Bada, M., & Nurse, J. R. (2021, June). Profiling the cybercriminal: A systematic review of research. In 2021 international conference on cyber situational awareness, data analytics and assessment (CyberSA) (pp. 1-8). IEEE. https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/2105/2105.02930.pdf
Crighton, D. A. (2021). Offender profiling. Forensic psychology, Pp. 148-159. https://www.academia.edu/download/62313627/forensic-psychology20200308-64891-joecd.pdf#page=166
Fox, B., & Farrington, D. P. (2018). What have we learned from offender profiling? A systematic review and meta-analysis of 40 years of research. Psychological Bulletin, 144(12), 1247. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Bryanna-Fox/publication/329341074_What_have_we_learned_from_offender_profiling_A_systematic_review_and_meta-analysis_of_40_years_of_research/links/5c21106d92851c22a34430eb/What-Have-We-Learned-From-Offender-Profiling-A-Systematic-Review-and-Meta-Analysis-of-40-Years-of-Research.pdf
Maarek, J., & Darwish, S. (2023). Criminal Profiling: A Look into Its Effectiveness and the Application of a New Evidence Based Approach. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jana-Maarek/publication/371607389_Criminal_Profiling_A_Look_into_Its_Effectiveness_and_the_Application_of_a_New_Evidence-Based_Approach/links/648be32195bbbe0c6ecb55da/Criminal-Profiling-A-Look-into-Its-Effectiveness-and-the-Application-of-a-New-Evidence-Based-Approach.pdf
Petherick, W. (2009). Serial Crime || Criminal Profiling Methods. , (), 67–108. doi:10.1016/b978-0-12-374998-7.00004-6
Petherick, W., & Brooks, N. (2021). Reframing criminal profiling: a guide for integrated practice. Psychiatry, Psychology and Law, 28(5), 694-710. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9103349/
Salfati, C. G. (2021). 1.3 – Investigative Psychology from Part I – Psychological Underpinnings: In The Cambridge Handbook of Forensic Psychology. Cambridge University Press. Pp. 54-68. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108848916.006
Sigurdardóttir, T. D., Rainbow, L., Gregory, A., Gregory, P., & Gudjonsson, G. H. (2023). The current role and contribution of “behavioural investigative advisers”(BIAs) to criminal investigation in the United Kingdom. Journal of Criminal Psychology, (ahead-of-print). https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/JCP-07-2023-0044/full/pdf
Yaksic, E. (2020). Evaluating the use of data-based offender profiling by researchers, practitioners and investigative journalists to address unresolved serial homicides. Journal of Criminal Psychology, 10(2), 123-144. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Enzo-Yaksic/publication/338435123_Evaluating_the_Use_of_Data-based_Offender_Profiling_by_Researchers_Practitioners_and_Investigative_Journalists_to_Address_Unresolved_Serial_Homicides/links/5e4c10d7299bf1cdb93552ad/Evaluating-the-Use-of-Data-based-Offender-Profiling-by-Researchers-Practitioners-and-Investigative-Journalists-to-Address-Unresolved-Serial-Homicides.pdf
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