NCJ Number
196248
Journal
Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology Volume: 17 Issue: 1 Dated: Spring 2002 Pages: 1-18
Date Published
2002
Length
18 pages
Annotation
This paper examines deductive and inductive criminal profiling models that classify crime-scene activity, and it concludes with a discussion of how to change profiling from an art to more of a scientific process through the use of investigative process management research.
Abstract
The paper first reviews the origins of the FBI's Criminal Profiling Project, followed by a description and analysis of the FBI's organized and disorganized typologies for serial murderers. Also discussed are the reliability of the FBI's profiling sample of 36 killers, 25 of whom were classified as serial murderers and 11 single or double killers. Inferring behavior from fantasy in profiling is then addressed, along with the validity and utility of the FBI's profiling model. Other profiling approaches described and critiqued in this paper are the Holmes, Hickey, Dietz, and Keppel and Walter profiling approaches. Another section of the paper discusses the heuristics and biases in profiling decision-making. The author concludes that on the whole, criminal profiling methods are inherently flawed due to weak operational definitions and inferred deductive assumptions made about offender actions and characteristics. In its present form, this leads to empirically unsound and misleading profiles. Given the problems with the deductive profiling approaches, the author suggests the usefulness of the inductive profiling approach of Investigative Process Management (IPM) (Godwin, 2000, 2001, 2003). IPM views the criminal's behaviors as shaped by daily life experiences and interpersonal relationships. IPM relies on offense and offender variables that have been inductively related and empirically replicated for linking crimes to a common offender without having to rely on the unreliability and weak validity and utility of deductive profiles. 52 references