Offender Profiling

Offender Profiling

1. Operations: assisting the police as psychologists.

   • Salience - what aspects of crime are most important in revealing things about offender and their motivation.
   • Suspect elicitation - what the likely characteristics are of someone who committed this type of crime.
   • Suspect prioritisation - how to prioritise with limited resources. Move people down the list rather than removing them.
   • Offender location - where they are likely to live or where their base might be. Pool resources and understand geographical patterning.
   • Linking crimes - which are likely to be committed by same perpetrators. Link when unusual things start happening.
   • Prediction - predicting where/when they might commit the next offence and what form it might take.
   • Investigative decision making - how to improve the process.
   • Information retrieval - work on information collected by police so tell them what needs to be collected.
   • Evaluation of information - how the information available if assessed e.g. being able to tell if a victim/witness is lying.

2. Interpreting Profiles

   • Senior investigative officers receive the profile.
   • The myth of the expert: police cannot test the claim if the expert doesn't provide empirical support. Experts pretend they have intuitive skills so people don't question their methods.
   • Barnum statement = vague, high base rates but non obvious statements and people see them as self-descriptive. Attend to the things that match and ignore the ones that don't.
   • Profilers use vague statements that can apply to a wide range of people so that when offenders are caught they can say the profile was accurate and statements are seen as relevant and evidence of guilt.
   • Alison, Morgan & Smith (2003) police officers given one of two offenders and a profile, complete opposite people but equally thought profiles were accurate.
   • Alison, Almond, Christiansen, Waring & Villejoubert (2013) 294 participants, 60 were police officers. Typical vs. atypical suspect and looked at process in evaluating information and influence of profiling.
     • Self generate offender profile then given a stereotypical and atypical subject but wide range of responses. People's judgement of guilt was based on their original profiles. 90% changed opinion on who was guilty when got a profile that didn't match what they said.
   • Profiles that match increase guilt showing that they change people's judgements which can lead investigations in wrong directions.
   • Christiansen, Waring, Almond & Lorek (2015) the power of any view. Follow up study but changed whether profile written by expert or novice but still changed their minds.

3. Evaluation Decision Making and Developing Best Practice

   • Investigative psychology approach to profiling.
   • Prepare an investigative report that is relevant and informative to the investigation and is able to stand up to legal and peer review based on scientific findings. Should also be of sufficient clarity (not to be confused by enquiry team).
   • Principles of profiling:
     • Falsifiable = must be a basis for testing the accuracy of the findings presented in the report.
     • Evidence = psychological principles upon which inferences are made must be clearly identified within the report.
     • Competence = report must not make assertions about the offender which are outside the scope of knowledge of the author.