Efficiency of Criminal Profiling - Essay Example

?Critically evaluate the evidence that criminal profiling is effective and Section # of Critically evaluate the evidence that criminal profiling is effective. Introduction. Criminal profiling: definitions and brief history. Criminal profiling can be defined as “the practice of inferring personality, behavioural, and demographic characteristics of criminals based on crime scene evidence” (Snook at al., 2007, 437). This is a relatively new approach which has been gaining in popularity over the last 35 years. It is usually carried out in a three stage process: “First, police officers collect crime scene data and forward it to a profiler; second, the profiler conducts an analysis of the crime scene data; and third, the profiler provides predictions about the type of individual likely to have committed the crime in question.” (Snook et al,, 2007, 438) There was initial enthusiasm for this approach, especially in the United States where the FBI set up a special ‘Behavioral Science Unit’ which analysed crimes and made recommendations for the application of criminal profiling in serious crime cases. From the beginning it was clear that the process involves multiple skills and multiple agencies, being a technique that combines elements of both art and science (Cook and Hinman, 1999, 230) and crosses over traditionally constructed professional boundaries. There has been discussion about some of the tensions arising from this multi-disciplinarity, and the gulf between researchers and practitioners. (Alison et al, 2004). Critical opinion on the practice of criminal profiling has been mixed, ranging from positive evaluations to serious doubts as to whether criminal profiling is any more valuable than common sense. This paper reviews the underpinning theories behind criminal profiling, discusses its methodologies and the problems that can arise in its use, and then finally evaluates its effectiveness. Theories behind criminal profiling. Psychology is the major science behind criminal profiling and its origins can be traced back to the beginning of the twentieth century: “the inferring of general characteristics of a person on the basis of a limited amount of information about them, has scientific roots in psychometric testing.” (Canter, 2000, p. 3) This in turn is based on a large body of research into the variation that exists between individuals. Psychologists searched for ways of isolating small individual features which, when considered together and against a large database can predict with some degree of accuracy what type of personality a person has and how they are likely to behave in different situations. The predictions are inferred, which means they start with what is known, but move into speculation based on a number of different areas of knowledge including past experience and databases collected and collated over the years. The so-called “homology assumption” asserts that “criminals who exhibit similar crime scene actions have similar background characteristics.” (Doan and Snook, 2008, p. 61). In practice this means that investigators in a case of rape, for example, will go on the assumption that there is “a positive linear relationship between the similarities of the crime scene actions and the corresponding similarities in the background characteristics for a sample of rapists.” Any inferences that are made are deliberately not absolute statements, but are based on likelihood and similarity: “It’s certainly possible for some characteristics to be consistent or homologous, and indeed this can be demonstrated in some cases. However, it is not a reasonable assumption in every case or even in most cases.” (Turvey, 2008, p. 540) Additional factors such as drug or alcohol use and mental illness with or without adequate medication can affect the offender’s behaviour in unpredictable ways, causing a depart at times from his or her enduring characteristics. Because of these variables, some of which cannot be known by investigators due to lack of evidence, Turvey stresses the point that criminal profiling can only ever be “a tool intended for use in assisting the process of criminal identification” and precisely not “a tool suited for the task of individuating offenders in its own right.” (Turvey, 2008, p. 543) There are a number of related theories which impact upon the way criminal profiling is used, including the so-called “Barnum effect” (Dickson and Kelly, 1985; Fichter and Sunerton, 1983) which describes how and why the human brain tend to see links between unrelated events, in order to construct a narrative and build meanings into the myriad of sensory inputs that are received each day. There is also a tendency called the “confirmation bias effect” which occurs when anyone starts from a hypothesis and collects evidence which supports that hypothesis, often ignoring or undervaluing any evidence which contradicts the hypothesis. Human beings have these built-in psychological tendencies, and they can creep into the most highly trained and experienced teams and be reinforced because of the pressure to find results. Methodologies and problems. The investigation of a crime starts with the collating of evidence from the crime scene and this produces a number of problems. The material produced for analysis by a criminal profile is bound to be limited by what is available and is collected and catalogued by police officers. In practice this means that the factual starting point is bound to be incomplete and subject to all sorts of bias and ambiguity. Selecting what is important to an investigation and what is not can be a very difficult undertaking. Once facts are collected it is necessary to find some way of making sense of them, and comparing them with other crimes and other criminals in order to look for patterns and any possible parallels. An important distinction between “organized” and “disorganized” classifications of crime scenes, and implicitly also of offenders, was proposed by researchers working with the FBI, and this was later refined to include a third category labelled “mixed” where elements of both category were present. (Canter et al., 2004, 3010303) Different visual models have been developed for this, including the concentric circles of a radix, developed by Guttman (1954) (cited in Canter, 2000, 11-14) which maps the features of a crime in such a way that features which are very common to a type of crime are plotted in the centre, and then the more unusual and or specific features are plotted further out towards the edge, leading to a differentiation of types of criminal. The features which occur on the periphery are likely to be the “signature” of the criminal and this forms the basis of a criminal profile. This tool depends on the data that is provided, but also on the definition of the different “themes” and the ability of the profiler to understand the psychology behind each of them and link them to the themes. The work of Hodge has produced a similar approach using MDS analysis, and plotting variables from murders onto a two dimensional graph which maps on to a three part interpersonal model with the categories victim as person, victim as object and victim as vehicle. (Hodge, 2000) These methods statistical modelling methods depend on the assumption that the analysis of particular features of crime drawn from concrete evidence and victim statements helps researchers to categorize crimes in ways that illuminate the behaviour of the perpetrator. Doan and Snook’s meta-analysis of crime scene and criminal categorizations has found, however, that there are several problems with relying on this approach. They point out that there are huge differences in results depending on such variables as the way crimes and items of evidence and types of criminal are categorized, and there is also huge variation in the way that investigators interpret empirical data.. It appears even that geographical and cultural factors affect these correlations, and this has led to the conclusion that the underlying empirical evidence for criminal profiling is often flawed, that many studies have found little or only partial support for the homology assumption. In the case of stranger rape, for example, it has been argued that categorizing the crimes into four categories of hostility, control, theft and involvement provides a means of understanding the psychological motivation in each case: “discrete crime scene behaviors may be less significant than the underlying themes of the offence: themes that can be expressed by the offender in a number of behaviorally different ways.” (Canter et al, 2003, 171) This research implies that identifying the theme in a particular case will help focus investigative work on perpetrators who exhibit matching psychological tendencies. It has been found in a study of international criminal profiles that “almost a quarter of the opinions given were ambiguous, more than half could not be verified, and over 80% were not supported (i.e. they were not substantiated by either research or theory).” (Alison, Smith and Morgan, 2003, p. 193) Research has shown that the best one can hope for in the use of criminal profiling in rape is a “best guess” indicating likely demographic details for certain types of crime. (Davies, 1997, p. 207) In one study of 100 male stranger rapists “Neither age, socio-demographic features nor previous convictions established any links with offence behaviour.” ( Mokros and Alison, 2002, 40) On the other hand there have been studies which are more positive, for example showing that the use of categories and patterns in repeat crimes “can give the detective an informed direction for further investigation” (Keppel and Walter, 1999, 436) Given the effects described above this leads to the rather worrying conclusion that even seasoned investigators “are prepared to perceive ambiguous statements, when presented in the form of an offender profile, as being relatively accurate descriptions of complete strangers.” (Alison, Smith and Morgan, 2003, p. 194) Added to this there is the phenomenon known as “the Hollywood effect” which is defined as “the process whereby claims or processes are regarded as effective because they have been portrayed in fictional movies.” (Canter and Youngs, 2009, 431) These significant problems are an indication that criminal profiling can be a risky procedure, and it carries many dangers, especially if those who are involved place too much faith in its ability to identify an individual criminal. There are some applications of criminal profiling, however, which do appear to provide extremely useful information for investigators. In cases where there is a lot of hard factual evidence, for example a large database of robbery locations, timings and modus operandi details in a specific geographical area, investigators can build up a set up suspects and link the data with variables like age, relationships, transportation, travel distance to commit crimes, etc. It is possible to use simple common sense inferences, along with some more advanced profiling with models and statistics, to produce predictions which enable police to track offenders and anticipate future crimes. In the 1990s there a simple distinction between “commuter” patterns of crime and “marauder” patterns and this was later refined with the help of modern software such as the Dragnet system which uses complex algorithms. Research on the comparative effectiveness of human analysis with training in statistical and spatial methods, as opposed to the use of a system like Dragnet is ongoing, and initial results appear to show that police officers on their own, with appropriate training, can make judgements as good as the computer programme, especially when crimes are clustered in the same area. Conclusion. The effectiveness of criminal profiling. This paper has shown that criminal profiling is a complex process which can use different approaches and focus on many kinds of data in order to come to conclusions which are likely to be a “best guess” situation. Because of the pressure to produce results in police practice, criminal profiling has been introduced, applied and further promoted with “unscientific haste” (Canter, 2000, 4) and the theoretical and methodological underpinning which is required for such activities is still being researched. The situation is compounded by a tendency in journalism and fiction to present the criminal profiler as some kind of dramatic genius figure who can identify the key features of a criminal just by noting evidence from a crime scene. Criminal profiling is not a quick and easy shortcut to identifying perpetrators. It has been able to provide many useful approaches and it can cut down time and costs in investigations by providing added focus based on a combination of known facts and educated inferences. On the other hand, it can be a risky technique if it is relied upon too thoroughly, and points investigators in the wrong direction. In short, it is too soon to tell how effective it has been, and there is still much to be done in improving its methods and testing its results before definitive judgements can be made. References Ainsworth, P.B. (2001) Offender Profiling and Crime Analysis. Cullompton: Willan. Alison, L. Smith, M.D. and Morgan, K. 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Criminal Justice and Behavior, 35 (10), 1257-1276. Snook, B., Eastwood, J., Gendreau, P., Goggin, C., & Cullen, R. M. (2007). Taking stock of criminal profiling: A narrative review and meta-analysis. Criminal Justice and Behavior. 34, 437-453. Turvey, B. E. (2008) Criminal Profiling: an introduction to behavioural evidence analysis. 3rd edition. Burlington, MA: Academic Press. Read More

 

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