PSYCH 3CC3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Violent Criminal Apprehension Program, Arthur Conan Doyle, Behavioral Analysis Unit
24 May 2018
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Criminal Profiling
Lecture 5
History of Profiling
• Smallest subfield of forensic psychology. 40 professional profilers in the entire world
• Profiling is the oldest aspect of forensic psychology to appear in literature:
o Murders in the Rue Morgue (1842) – fictional book by Edgar Allen Poe. Saw
profilers as someone who worked by intuition
o A Study in Scarlet (1887) – by Arthur Conan Doyle, first appearance of Sherlock
Holmes. He makes inferences about perpetrators from aspects of the crime scene
• Jack the Ripper (1888) – first modern profiler, by Dr. Thomas Bond, pathologist
examining body
o Serial murders of 5-6 prostitutes in Whitechapel (East London)
o He had a description of what he thought Jack the Ripper was
Purposes of Profiling
• Provide offender characteristics – every profile includes a proposed demographic,
physical, & psychological description of the offender
• Help understand crime scene – understand actions at the crime scene to try & understand
what happened
• Provide leads for investigators – profiles don’t have to be accurate but helps provides
leads, a place to start looking
• Narrow pool of viable subjects – gives out age ranges, sex, race etc.
• Prioritize investigation of subjects – if you have lots of suspects, you can pursue certain
people first
• Risk of offender escalation – profile states how likely they are to re-offend & commit
crime again
• Evaluate suspect possessions – once suspect is apprehended, profile helps explain how
their possessions fit into the crime or match psychological state
• Develop interrogation strategies – depends on their personality
• Show links between crimes – aspects of crime scene could connect serial killers
• Supportive trial testimony – profilers sometimes provide expert testimony
Challenges of Profiling
• Turning crime scene info into offender description – this is hard to do. Crime scenes
don’t provide a lot of info b/c they were only there once and for a few minutes
• Personality tests can’t do this – scientific, empirically-based tests can’t do this so we
can’t expect profilers to
• Unscientific – based in intuition & experience. There is something special about profilers
that not everyone has which allows them to be a profiler
• Not well evaluated – little literature evaluating accuracy & usefulness of profiling. FBI
doesn’t share their profiles so they can’t be studied
Basic Assumptions of Profiling
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• Behavioural consistency – assumes offenders behave similarly across offences. The
things they do consistently must be unusual and not done by other individuals (cross-
offence similarities must be infrequent)
o Bennell & Canter (2002) – examined 4 characteristics for 2 crimes (commercial
burglars). Found the only consistent thing was distance b/w crimes. Everything
else (type of business, method of entry, property stolen) was linked but not
strongly enough
▪ There may be behavioural consistencies but it’s difficult to identify them
o Bateman & Salfati (2007) – examined 35 behaviours of 90 offenders in 450 serial
homicide cases. Bringing crime kit & destroying evidence common across
offences by infrequent overall. Bringing weapon & restraining victim common
across offenses but very common
• Behavioural differentiation – offenders differ from one another in their patterns of inter-
crime similarity
o Not much evidence but plausible
• Homology – offenders w/ similar crime behaviours will have similar characteristics
o Mokros & Allison (2002) – looked at rapists, whether those who offend similarly
are similar in personal characteristics
▪ Found no positive correlation b/w crime similarity & similarity in age,
employment, ethnicity, criminal record, etc.
o Doan & Snook (2008) – used typologies to classify 87 arson cases & 175
robberies. Homology assumption violated 56% of arson types & 67% robbery
types
▪ Also found no correlation
FBI: Behavioral Analysis Unit
• Founded in 1972 by Howard Teten, oldest profiling organization
• Early profilers: Robert Ressler, Roy Hazelwood, John Douglas (model for profiling in
books/movies)
• It is under the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime (NCAVC)
o Includes: BAU (behavioural analysis unit), CASMIRC (child abduction serial
murder investigative resources centre), & VICAP (violent criminal apprehension
program)
FBI Profiling Model
• Outlines how an offender profile is put together
• Stage 1: Profiling Inputs
o Collecting crime scene information, victimology, forensic information, police
reports, photographs
• Stage 2: Decision Process Model
o After getting crime scene information, this stage puts it all together
o Labels homicide type & style (single, duo, triple, mass murder which is 4+ at
same time/place, street killings which is different places close in time, serial
murder which has a cooling off period of days/weeks/months)
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o Primary intent (reason for crime), victim & offender risk (walking alone at night
in bad neighbourhood is high-risk for victim, offender attack during middle of day
is high-risk)
o Escalation risk (based on statistics, whether people like this will commit a crime
again) murderers are least likely to repeat while rapists are likely
o Time, location factors (can give clues about their lifestyle/occupation)
• Stage 3: Crime Assessment
o Crime reconstruction – determine what happened & order of events of crime
o Crime classification – “organized/disorganized”, disorganized criminals leaves
evidence behind, uses weapons found at scene rather than preparing, etc.
Organized criminals plan ahead to stage crime scene, moves evidence, prepares
weapons
▪ Assumes their lives will be either organized or disorganized too but
evidence shows this is not true
o Staging – murders stage crimes to make it look like something else
o Motivation – purpose of crime
o Crime scene dynamics – nature of interaction b/w offender and victim, how this
info can be used
• Stage 4: Criminal Profile
o Profile is put together including demographics (race, age, gender, income,
education), physical characteristics (height, weight, hair colour), habits, beliefs,
values, recommendations (how FBI recommends finding this person, whether
they work day/night, which neighbourhood, etc.)
• Stage 5: Investigation – going out to interview suspects, standard police work
• Stage 6: Apprehension – finding the system. This has to do w/ legal system rather than
forensic psychology
Organized vs. Disorganized Distinction
• Center et al (2004) – 36 serial murderers were interviewed; these were random murderers
who were willing to be interviewed. Interviewed were unstructured & different for each
interviewee
o Distinguished b/w organized & unorganized criminals, but did not validate this w/
another sample after
• There is no indication that organized features correlate with each other
Holmes & Holmes Model – Offender Typologies
• Begins w/ the same disorganized asocial and organized no social distinction
• 4 typologies (types of offenders):
o Serial murderers (motives)
▪ Spatial mobility – whether someone kills in a small neighbourhood or
widely apart (not sure why this is in here), how far they’ll travel
▪ Visionary killer – kills by a vision they have, usually have a mental
disorder
▪ Mission killer – killing people/groups of a certain kind b/c they believe it’s
necessary, sex trade workers if they believe prostitution is wrong, may be
sane
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Document Summary
History of profiling: smallest subfield of forensic psychology. 40 professional profilers in the entire world: profiling is the oldest aspect of forensic psychology to appear in literature, murders in the rue morgue (1842) fictional book by edgar allen poe. Saw profilers as someone who worked by intuition: a study in scarlet (1887) by arthur conan doyle, first appearance of sherlock. Challenges of profiling: turning crime scene info into offender description this is hard to do. There is something special about profilers that not everyone has which allows them to be a profiler: not well evaluated little literature evaluating accuracy & usefulness of profiling. Fbi doesn"t share their profiles so they can"t be studied. Basic assumptions of profiling: behavioural consistency assumes offenders behave similarly across offences. The things they do consistently must be unusual and not done by other individuals (cross- offence similarities must be infrequent: bennell & canter (2002) examined 4 characteristics for 2 crimes (commercial burglars).
