Offender Profiling

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Offender Profiling
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Your murder case.You need to make psychological
inferences to help the police

• The body of a young woman has been found
  strangled.
• This was done very effectively, apparently with
  bare hands.
• There is no murder weapon.
• There are no eye witnesses to a likely suspect.
• The body has been left in the centre of the path
  and is visible from a road looking into the
  alleyway

The murder scene.
3
The police are very worried because this is the
third murder in the West London area.
The similarities are that the victim was female,
efficiently strangled and the bodies found in the
centre of alleyways within sight of busy roads.
4
All the bodies had been carefully placed on their
backs and the arms carefully folded on their
chests. The victims face was carefully covered
with their own jacket. There was no forensic
evidence of sexual assault. There was no signs
of defence injuries. There had not been a
struggle. It was likely that all victims had
been murdered in the early evening.
5
All the women were well dressed. They came from
a middle class professional background. All had
personal I.D. removed but no money or valuables
were taken.
There is a complete lack of forensic evidence.
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The Profile

• Strangulation ex army/security/martial arts.
• Strong feelings of rejection. Only chose women of
  a certain type. Perhaps been rejected by this
  class of women. His mother?
• Lived in West London. Grew up in the area. Knew
  alleys.
• Controlled, organised personality. Meticulous
  planning. Victims always alone and no witnesses.
• Asexual. A loner. A stranger to the victims. Is
  a serial killer, as bodies have a signature (all
  placed in the same way). The work of one man.
• Wants publicity. Bodies not hidden. Maybe
  collects cuttings of murders.
• Has hoard of souvenirs. Personal I.D./Credit
  Cards.
• Knows about forensic evidence. Knows justice
  system.

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OFFENDER PROFILING

• Does this information make it any easier to
  arrest the killer?
• David Canter. Investigative psychology. ..often
  little more than, at best, subjective opinion,
  common sense.
• John Duffy the railway rapist. Was low on the
  police suspect list however with the advice of
  Canter he was re-arrested, convicted and
  confessed to a series of murders and rapes

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• Blau (1994) defines offender profiling as a
  .method of helping to identify the criminal
  based on the nature of the offence and the manner
  in which it was committed.
• Copson (1995) argues the police need 4 types of
  information.
• The type of person who committed the crime.
• Are they likely to offend again?
• Is the offence linked to others?
• What sort of strategies should they use in
  interview?
• One of the first to use profilers was the FBI as
  it is most useful in serious offences such as
  rape, murder, arson and kidnapping.
• It is either based on a scientific approach based
  on statistical analysis of the offence and area
  or a clinical approach which uses personality
  theory. Often these approaches are used together.

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Different Approaches
FBI Approach

• The Top Down Approach
• Set up the Behaviour Science Unit
• Interviewed 36 convicted serial killers. Included
  Charles Manson and Ted Bundy.
• Categorised as organised or disorganised killers.

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Investigative Psychological Approach

• The Bottom up Approach
• Adopted by Prof. Canter of Liverpool University.
  Famously helped identify John Duffy The
  Railway Rapist.
• Built up a database of convicted killers.
• Canter and Heritage (1990) studied 66 sexual
  assault cases committed by 27 offenders. Built up
  33 characteristics that were common to these
  cases.
• They use multivariate analysis. They correlated
  data and found patterns of behaviour.

• Canter identified 5 characteristics
• Criminal history
• Domestic and social characteristics
• Residential location
• Personal characteristics
• A history of occupation and education.

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The Clinical Approach

• Boon (1997). Describes using theoretical models
  such as personality theory to advise police
  investigations.
• Britton (1997) looks at each case in isolation
  rather than using statistical analysis of
  previous cases.
• Copson et.al (1997) argues what is needed is a
  motive from the evidence combined with a
  theoretical understanding that explains offender
  behaviour.

Note - Geographic Profiling in Booklet Offender
Profiling
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Evaluation
Negative
Positive

• Overall studies suggest offender profiling is
  useful to aid police however not to actually
  catch offender.
• Jackson et.al. (1993) interviewed 20 police
  officers in Holland and found a high level of
  satisfaction with profilers.
• Douglas (1981) in the USA found the FBI said that
  profilers focussed their work, saved time and
  gave detail. The benefits outweighed the cost.

• Only can be used for specific crimes. These
  crimes are rare, therefore difficult to evaluate.
• Only can be used in limited number of cases
  therefore difficult to generalise.
• Little research as to whether profiling is
  universal, as most work has been carried out in
  western societies. It has an ethnocentric bias.

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Evaluation

• Finkel et. al. (1990) compared 5 groups who were
  asked to develop
• a profile in a murder and a sex case.
• Expert profilers
• Detectives with profiling experience
• Detectives without profiling experience
• Clinical psychologists
• Undergraduates
• The most accurate were the detectives. Police
  experience seemed
• to be more useful in these type of cases.

Careful read the 2 case studies - John Duffy and
Rachel Nickell