Investigative Psychology

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Offender Profiling The Art and the
Science PSY746 Empirical Profiling Methods Dr C
Gabrielle Salfati
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Summary of Lecture

• What is Offender Profiling (OP)
• What is the basis for OP
• Main psychological principles of OP
• Profiling homicide
• (Video)

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What is Offender Profiling, and What is its Use?
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The Narborough Inquiry

• 1983 15-year-old Lynda Mann raped and murdered
• 1986 15-year-old Dawn Ashworth raped and murdered
• Cases linked by DNA evidence
• Police action 4,583 men blood tested

Colin Pitchfork the first man to be convicted by
DNA evidence
Problem Blood testing everybody not resource
efficient Needed Method to narrow down suspect
pool, THEN blood-test for DNA
A strategy enabling law enforcement to
OFFENDER PROFILING prioritize the most likely
suspect based on their behavior at the crime
scene
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Offender Profiling

• a strategy enabling law enforcement to
  prioritize the most likely suspect based on their
  behavior at the crime scene (Douglas et al.
  1992)

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Offender Profiling - A History
1880s First known profile of a serial killer by
Police surgeon Dr. Thomas Bond in the UK
The police photograph of the murder scene of Mary
Jane Kelly Jack the Rippers 5th and final victim
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Offender Profiling - A History
Hitlers suicide was predicted by Walter C.
Langer Office of Strategic Studies
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Offender Profiling - A History

• 1950s Mad Bomber of New York

Dr James Brussels
George Metesky
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Offender Profiling - A History

• Modern Profiling
• Early years (1970s-1980s)
• Relatively new area
• Based on experiences and expertise of clinicians
  and investigating officers (for more information
  on clinical profiling, see Ainsworth 2001)
• Training experience led and lengthy

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What is the Basis of Offender Profiling?
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Using The Crime Scene
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Profiling Homicide

• Examining behaviour at crime scene
• (victim, location, wounding etc.)
• Empirically categorise behaviours into different
  styles
• Link crime scene types to types of offender
  characteristics
• Use this information to help focus police
  inquiries on most likely suspect

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ExperienceEvidence from longitudinal
literature shows that an individual is a product
of their social environmentBehavioural
strategies encoded as scriptse.g. Huesmann
(1988)
The Main Psychological Principles Behind
Profiling
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ConsistencyEvidence of thematic
consistencies and patterns between earlier and
later life characteristicse.g. The Cambridge
Study (Farringdons work), Gottfredson and
Hirschi (1990)Phenotypic vs. genotypic
behaviours e.g. Caspi and Bem (1990)
The Main Psychological Principles Behind
Profiling
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Characteristics
Actions
Type 1
Type 2
Type 3
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Important Issues in Consistency

• People dont always act the same way every time
• Behaviour is situation influenced
• Behaviour changes over time
• e.g. Duffy the Railway rapist

Need to understand influence of situation on
behavior how this can be seen at crime
scene Look at the psychological meaning of the
behavior
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Associating Behaviour type to Offender type
Bind Gag
Kiss Compliment
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Behavior vs Psychological Type

• Situation
• 10 rapes all victims are GAGGED
• 11th rape victim is BOUND

Is this last victim part of the same series?
Focusing on the behavior no Focusing on the
psychological meaning yes
CONTROL
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THE SCIENCE To back up any conclusions made by
Crime Analyst Profiler
Bind Gag
Kiss Compliment
Controlling
Pseudo Intimate
Offender characteristics A
Offender characteristics B
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Consistency

• Consistency within sub-groups defining themes
• A- C consistency
• Consistency across time (serial)

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Serial Crime Linking
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Establishing the link

• Can we link crimes to each other?

Crime 1
Crime 2
Crime 3
Crime 4
Crime 5
Crime 6
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Establishing the link

• Can we link crimes to each other?

A
A
A
A
A
A
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Establishing the link

• Can we link crimes to each other?

Crime 1
Crime 2
Crime 3
Crime 4
Crime 5
Crime 6
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Establishing the link

• Can we link a series to a specific type of
  offender?

Crime 1
Crime 2
Crime 3
Crime 4
Crime 5
Crime 6
Offender A
Offender B
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Establishing the link

• Questions
• Are offenders consistent
• If they are, how this is displayed
• What behaviours are the most reliable to focus on

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Until recently, most writings are speculative and
not based on scientific statistical
studiesHave been shown by latest studies in IP
to be unreliable for the use in
investigationsImportance of knowing what is
Myth and what is based on Scientific Study
Talking heads in the media
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Example of Empirical Profiling

• Salfati Canter (1999)

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Homicide Profiling(Salfati and Canter 1999)

• Crown Prosecution files and police files
• Crime scene report photographs
• Coroners report forensics
• Information about victim and offender
• 36 crime scene actions (objective behavioural
  information)
• 16 offender characteristics (only what was
  available in files)

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Main Aims

• Possibility of behaviourally classifying homicide
  crime scenes?
• Possibility of linking psychologically different
  types of crime scenes to thematically similar
  offender characteristics?

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Dichotomous Content Analysis
Gag
Bind
Kiss
etc.
0
0
1
Case 1
1
1
0
Case 2
Case 3
1
0
1
etc.
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Information Analysed (MDS - SSA)
Gag
Bind
Kiss
Compliment
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Information Analysed (MDS - SSA)
Gag
Bind
Kiss
Compliment
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Information Analysed (MDS - SSA)
Gag
Gag
Bind
Bind
Kiss
Kiss
Compliment
Compliment
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Information Analysed (MDS - SSA)
Gag
Bind
Kiss
Compliment
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Information Analysed (MDS - SSA)
Gag
Controlling
Bind
Kiss
Compliment
Pseudo-intimate
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Analysis of Crime Scene Actions

• SSA analysis of 36 actions that occurred at the
  crime scene
• Hypothesis
• Similarly themed crime scene actions will occur
  in the same region of the plot.
• Different regions will help distinguish between
  different types of homicides.

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(No Transcript)
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Armed services Prison
Theft Burglary Unemployed Local Knew
victim Younger
Violence Sex offences Damage Disorder
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Applying Case Studies to Model of Homicide
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Case Study 1
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Case Study 1
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Case Study 2
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Case Study 2
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Case Study 3
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Case Study 3
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