Lectures 9 and 10

Criminal Profiling
 What is criminal profiling?
 Construction of a psychological, behavioral and demographic profile of the type of person
likely to have committed the crime
 Another definition is “Inferring the traits of individuals responsible for committing criminal acts
has commonly been referred to as criminal profiling”

 Usually applied to serial crimes (serial murders, serial rapes…)

 Definitions & Aims
Profiling: an attempt to produce a description or profile of an offender by analysing the
characteristics of the offence and other background information
 Aims
 Descriptions of factors:-
 Social: employment , marriage
 Physical: age, race
 Mental: IQ, motivation characteristics of criminal
 History of Criminal Profiling
 1. The Blood Libel or false accusation of ritual killing
 Anti-Semite sentiment in Europe and alleged ritualistic killing of Christian children (1100s till the
1600s AD)
 The blood libel is the first documented form of criminal profiling or is also one of the first forms of
false reporting
 “The blood libel spread across England and Continental Europe over the centuries, with hundreds of
accusations, all based on hysteria rather than evidence. There were notorious blood libel cases in
Lincoln in 1255 and Trento, Italy, in 1475. Many Jews were executed. Others were killed by mobs
seeking revenge”
 History of Criminal
Profiling
Malleus Maleficarum, also known as “the
witch hammer”
It was a form of “bible of witch hunters”
-the first criminal profiling guide
published to identify, persecute and
punishment of witches
  This form of profiling shows how a large number of
women were executed on false accusations of witchcraft
 Their systematic discrimination and executions indicate
History of Criminal how libeled texts were used as justifications for such
Profiling forms of anti-humane treatment of women and how their
Witches were described primarily as false profiling was done
women who
• have a spot, scar, or birthmark, sometimes on the
genitals and
sometimes invisible to the Inquisitor’s eye7
(Figure 1.7)
• live alone
• keep pets (a demon in animal form known as a
familiar)
• suffer the symptoms of mental illness (auditory or
visual hallucinations, etc.)
• cultivate medicinal herbs
n have no children
 Profiling
 Copson (1995) stated that the police needs 4 types of
information from profilers:
 The type of person who committed the crime
 How great a threat they pose in the future
 The possibility the case is linked to others also referred to as “crime linking”
 How the police should interview the suspects; what strategies they should use.
 History of Criminal Profiling
 In the United States, the work of the American psychiatrist Dr. James A. Brussel of Greenwich Village,
New York, is considered by many to have advanced the investigative thinking behind the criminal
profiling process significantly.
 As a clinician, his approach to profiling was diagnostic
 Dr. Brussel’s method included the diagnosis of an unknown offender’s mental disorders from
behaviors evident from the crime scene.
 He would infer the characteristics of an unknown offender, in part,
by comparing the criminal behavior to his own experiences with the behavior of
patients who shared similar disorders. Dr. Brussel also subscribed to the opinion
that certain mental illnesses were associated with certain physical builds, not unlike the theories of
criminologists a century before
 History of Criminal Profiling
 The Famous Mad Bomber Case
 During the 1940s and 1950s, the “Mad Bomber” terrorized the city of New York (Figure 1.16).
 He set off at least 37 bombs in train stations and theaters all over the
city. Dr. Brussel was asked to analyze the case, and he determined that the person responsible for the crimes had
the following characteristics
 Male
 Knowledge of metalworking, pipefitting and electricity
 Suffered from paranoia
 Had a chronic disorder
 Persistent delusions
 Athletic body
 Unmarried and possibility a virgin
 Lived alone or with a female, mother like relative
 Roman catholic
 Lived in Connecticut
 Wore a buttoned, double breasted suit
 Modern Day Cases of Criminal Profiling
 California v. Jennifer and Matt Fletcher
 The murder of a police officer and intentional use of “staging and undoing” tactic
 Joel and Jennifer Shanbrom

 Pictures of the married couple taken a few months

prior to the killing
Jennifer and Matt Fletcher
 Pictures of Jennifer Shanbrom and Matt
Fletcher
 Criminal profiling techniques can be used
for the following types of crimes
 sadistic torture in sexual assaults
 evisceration
 post-mortem slashing & cutting
 motiveless fire-setting or arson
 lust and mutilation murder
 rape
 satanic & ritualistic crime
 Pedophilia
 necrophilia
 Two approaches to profiling
 Typological
 The FBI approach involves categorising offenders by the type of offence they have committed.
 Geographical profiling
 The British approach is based on using the location of the crime to identify the likely home of the
offender.
 Are these two approaches bottom up or top down?
 American (FBI) approach ‘Top Down’
Creation of typologies and motivation based on interviews of captured criminals, and past crimes
 Intuitive analysis of data based on personal experience of police
 Matching a particular type with a particular crime
 eg. organized Vs disorganized
 FBI Approach
The FBI requires the following before a profile can be made
 colour photos of the crime scene,
 data about the neighbourhood of the crime (for example, the type of housing and average
income of residents),
 the medical examiner's report,
 a map of the victim's travels prior to death,
 a complete investigative report of the incident,
 background details of the victim.
 The collection of this information is part of a systematic process following
four stages:
 Data assimilation; collection of all available information.
 Crime classification; attempts to classify the crime
 Crime reconstruction; attempts to reconstruct the crime and generate hypotheses about the
behaviours involved.
 Profile generation.
 Basis of this approach
 The US approach is based on the work of the FBI in response to serial murderers.
 The main source of their data is interviews with offenders in prison.
 FBI investigators in 1979 interviewed 36 sexual murderers and were able to categorise them as
either 'organised' or 'disorganised'.
Three More Approaches to Criminal Profiling
 Signature - something done to fulfill or satisfy the offenders emotional state
 Signature of a criminal tends to remain the same as it satisfied some psychological needs and tendencies as reported in numerous
studies
 However, signature is not the same as Modus Operandi
 Modus Operandi - what is needed to complete the crime. It is also defined as the standard procedure used for completing a crime
 Other aspects of the crime scene
 Crime Scene Staging
 Sometimes a perpetrator will attempt to confuse the forensic investigators by staging a crime scene. This involves altering the scene to
try to disguise what really happened. When reconstructing the crime scene, the investigating team must always be on the lookout for
staging. Typically, evidence or bodies will be moved, or there will be signs of a break-in that did not actually happen.
 Undoing
 Another concept sometimes encountered in crime scene analysis is undoing. Undoing is a behavioral pattern found at the scene in which
the offender tried to psychologically “undo” the crime. For example, a distraught or emotionally upset offender, who kills the victim,
may try to undo his or her actions by placing the body in bed, gently placing the head on a pillow, and neatly covering the body with
blankets. Or he or she may place the victim upright in a chair, trying desperately to return the victim to a natural-looking state.
 Trophy
 There are also those criminals who keep things belonging to their victims allowing them to relive and re-experience the crime they had
committed.
 Dennis Nielsen-serial killer…killed 15 young men and boys and kept their rotting corpses under his bed because he was lonely
 A typical case of necrophilia defined as an attraction to dead bodies
 Jerome Brudos-also known as the lust killer…..had a liking for women’s shoes and underwear…asked wife to wear heels when doing
house work…sexual crimes…..cutting body parts of women….keeping them as trophies….
 Other aspects of the crime scene
 Staging and Posing
 The FBI profiler may also encounter deliberate alterations of the crime scene or the victim’s
body position at the scene of the murder. If these alterations are made for the purpose of
confusing or otherwise misleading criminal investigators, then they are called staging and they
are considered to be part of the killer’s MO.
 On the other hand, if the crime scene alterations only serve the fantasy needs of the offender,
then they are considered part of the signature and they are referred to as posing. Sometimes, a
victim’s body is posed to send a message to the police or public. For example, Jack the Ripper
sometimes posed his victims’ nude bodies with their legs spread apart to shock onlookers and
the police in Victorian England.
 The Criminal Profile Generation Process
 The First Stage includes:
 A comprehensive study of the nature of the
criminal act and the types of persons who have
committed like offenses in the past.
 A detailed analysis of the crime scene
 An in-depth examination of the background
and activities of the victim or victims
 A formulation of possible motivating factors for
all parties involved
 The development of a description of the perpetrator based on overt characteristics from the crime scene
and past criminals’ behavior.
 The Criminal Profile Generation Process
 The second stage explores decision making of criminals by trying to understand the patterns of
crime and classifications of murders
 mass murder (defined as anything more than three victims in one location and within one event with
no cooling off time) (Douglas et al., 1986)
 spree murder
(killings at two or more locations with an emotional cooling-off period between homicides) and the
serial murder, involving three or more separate events with a cooling-off period between homicides
(Douglas et al., 1986).
 Organized (non-social criminals)
 Disorganized (asocial)
 a) Organised offenders shows evidence of planning, they target the victim
and have tried to control the situation as much as possible. They have at
least average intelligence, social and sexual competence and are already in
an intimate relationship.
 b) Disorganised offenders tend to be socially inadequate, may know the
crime scene or the victim and lives alone. The crime scene evidences the
impulsive, unplanned nature of the attack that uses minimal amount of
restraint and no attempt to conceal the body.
 Organized murder scene; Planned. Victim -targeted stranger. Control
including restraints. Controlled talk. Aggression before death. Body hidden or
moved from crime scene. Weapon and evidence absent. Use a car or truck.
Commit sexual acts with live victims
 Disorganized scene; Spontaneous. Victim known by offender. Little control.
Sexual acts before death. Body not hidden or left at crime scene. Evidence
present. Keep the dead body. Try to depersonalize the body.
 Psychological Autopsies: The term psychological autopsy refers to the
investigative method used by psychologists or other social scientists to help
determine the mode of death in equivocal cases
 Four types of death (natural, accidental, homicidal and suicidal)
 Equivocal death analysis is an investigative process that can aid in determining the
manner of death by examining existing forensic evidence and the behavioral and
psychological history of the deceased
 FBI Psychological Profile of Lust Killers
Organized Killer Disorganized Killer
 intelligent  below average IQ
 masculine image
 socially immature
 charismatic
 seldom dates
 high school failure
 socially capable
 unemployed father
 sexually capable
 lives alone
 occupationally mobile  has secret hiding places
 lives with partner  nocturnal
 geographically mobile  lives/works near crime
 harsh childhood discipline  unskilled worker
 controlled emotions  behavior change
 interested in media  low interest in media
 model inmate  high anxiety during crime
 FBI Profile: Organized
 Show signs of planning and evidence of control at the crime scene
 Offenders are -

 Intelligent

 Sociallyskilled
 Sexually competent

 Live with a partner

 Usually target strangers

 Antisocial & psychopathic personality

 British Approach 'Bottom up'
 Data-driven
 building up individualistic profiles by looking at associations between crime scene and offenders
 The use of scientific statistical analysis
 Application of psychological Theories
 Types of analysis may include - content analysis of speech - location - timing of offences
 Investigative psychological approach
 Canter (1994) believes that criminals, like most people behave consistently.
 An analysis of the pattern of behaviour observed over a number of crimes committed by a serial
offender will give clues about the non-offending everyday behaviour of the criminal.
 Behaviour patterns
 Canter believes that offences are not separate behaviours from the rest of the offenders
 Offences are directly linked to their everyday interactions.
 He uses statistical analysis to buid up a picture of a wide range of factors associated with each
other to give a profile.
 BUT he does not place offenders into typologies the way the FBI does, but looks tat the way
their behaviour mirrors other aspects of their day-to-day life.
 Canter identified five characteristics which he believes can aid
investigations
 Residential Location
 Criminal Biography
 Domestic/Social Characteristics
 Personal Characteristics
 Occupational/Educational History
 Geographic Profiling
 Geographic profiling focuses on determining the “probable spatial behavior of the offender within
the context of the locations of, and the spatial relationships between, the various crime sites”
(Rossmo, 1997, p. 161).
 It assumes that an offender’s home or other locations he or she is familiar with can be determined
from their crime locations.
 “Crimes are not just random—there’s a pattern. It has been said criminals are not so different from
shoppers or even from lions hunting prey. When an offender has committed a number of crimes,
they
leave behind a fingerprint of their mental map, and you can decode certain things from that. We put
every crime location into a computer program and it produces a map showing the most probable
areas the police should target”
 Geographic Profiling
 Lazy criminals: the least effort principle as shown in the distance decay theory
 Distance decay: refers to the idea that the farther a criminal travels from his or her home, the
lesser is the frequency of his or her crimes
 It is also marked as a preference for close to home crimes
 The circle theory
 Classification of offenders as
 1) marauders
 2) commuters
Types of offenders based on geographic profiling
 The marauder…uses his home location as the central base to operate…..draw a circle technique
 The commuter….moves to some place to offend…however, they commit crimes at places
which are geographically closer to one another
 However, profiling can become difficult if the mode of offending of a criminal keeps evolving
with time
 Advantages of British Profiling/disadvantages of USA
 British profilers look at all the facts before they make assumptions about
the suspect. Therefore they are approaching the investigation with an open
mind.
 The US profilers will have an idea of the type of person they are looking for based on
theory. They will have preconceptions about who they are looking for. Kocsis et al
(2002) suggests that more experienced detectives are not as good at profiling perhaps
because they have preconceptions about what they are looking for.
 British profiling treats each crime scene as individual, taking the
characteristics for each case and examining only those, not comparing
them with others.
 The US system could lead to profilers missing important and unique evidence that is
individual to that case.
 Disadvantage of British profiling/advantage of USA
 British profiling is time consuming and expensive to do and may mean it
takes longer to identify suspects.
 The US approach will narrow down the list of suspects quickly, which could lead to the
crime being solved more quickly.
 British profiling is carried out by specialist Psychologists with experience
in criminal investigation. This may mean they have too many stereotypical
views about suspects, which may influence their ability to profile
effectively. Kocsis et al (2002) suggests that more experienced detectives are
not as good at profiling perhaps because they have preconceptions about
what they are looking for.
 The US system can be used by anyone as it doesn’t rely on the ability or experience of
any one individual.