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International Journal of Offender Therapy andComparative Criminology
Volume XX Number XMonth XXXX xx-xx© 2009 SAGE Publications10.1177/0306624X09339175http://ijo.sagepub.comhosted athttp://online.sagepub.com
Authors’ Note:
Please address correspondence to Alfredo Verde, University of Genoa, DIMEL–Sezionedi Criminologia e Psichiatria Forense, Via de Toni 12, Genoa 16132, Italy; e-mail: alverde@tin.it.
Criminal Profiling as aPlotting Activity Basedon Abductive Processes
Alfredo Verde
University of Genoa, Italy
Antonio Nurra
 Licensed Psychologist, Genoa, Italy
In this article the authors analyze the nature and aims of criminal profiling from atheoretical point of view. The need to become increasingly “scientific” has given riseto the modern approaches of profiling, which have been particularly successful in casesof serial homicides and sex crimes, given that compulsive (perverse) acts, because of their ritual nature, have been described as being more easily foreseeable and presum-ably linkable to the psychological and even personal characteristics of a given criminal.On this basis, the authors analyze profiling from an epistemological point of view andshow how, in the concrete activity of profiling, profilers depart from the “certainty” of the scientific models (those that are based on deductive–inductive processes); the epis-temological basis of reasoning changes as there is no longer an induction–deductionmodel but rather an abductive model (as conceived and explained by Peirce) in whichthe importance of plotting (the weaving of a narrative) becomes greater.
 Keywords:
criminal profiling; epistemology; Peircean abduction; plotting 
Psychological Profiling as an Attemptto Make Police Investigations “Scientific”
Various terms have been used to define what is now commonly called criminal profiling. The first pioneering experiences date back to the 1950s and were chieflyconducted by clinicians with psychiatric training and a psychoanalytical background(the phase defined as “diagnostic evaluations” by Wilson, Lincoln, & Kocsis, 1997).Since the end of the 1960s, police forces themselves worked out a new way of for-mulating hypotheses on the personal features, character, and psychopathology of criminals. Indeed, it is well known how the FBI developed the theory of crime sceneanalysis (CSA; Kocsis & Palermo, 2006), which was based on the construction of 
Int J Offender Ther Comp Criminol OnlineFirst, published on June 26, 2009 as doi:10.1177/0306624X09339175
 
2 International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology
databases that connected the characteristics of crime scenes with those of criminals;the characteristics of actual crime scenes could then be compared with thoserecorded in the database to trace the profile of the unknown criminal.Profiling first came to the attention of the general public through mass mediacoverage of serial crimes, especially serial murders. Subsequently, it returned, so tospeak, to the academic and scientific sphere, where it was subjected to psychological–statistical analysis. In this regard, the dispute between the advocate of investigative psychology (IP), David Canter, and the FBI profilers (Wilson et al., 1997) isrenowned: Canter accused the FBI profilers of adopting methodologies that were notempirically validated and scientifically reliable (and therefore falsifiable) to draw updata on the crime on the basis of the crime scene. Current opinion is that profilinghas gradually shifted from a nonscientific to a scientific approach as a result of theinflux of academic psychologists (Hicks & Sales, 2006).This article does not aim to discuss why, after developing in silence, as it were,in the 1970s and 1980s, profiling gained worldwide media attention in the early1990s. The monster, as depicted in several popular films and television series, theunknown perpetrator of serial crimes that fall outside the common categoriesobserved by criminology, soon captured the public’s attention; in the mind of the public, he became a symbol of evil, a representation of the growing insecurity of thesociety of “liquid fear” (Bauman, 2006; Jenkins, 1994; Picart & Greek, 2003), andalmost simultaneously rose the image of his hunter, the profiler.But how does profiling work? How can the profiler reconstruct the personality anddemographic features of the criminal on the basis of the crime scene? After a brief review of the (very limited) success of profiling practices, this article examines criminal profiling from the point of view of its epistemological foundation and the reasoning processes of the profiler, with particular regard to Charles Sanders Peirce’s theory of scientific reasoning. In the last section, an attempt is made to define profiling as a nar-rative construction based on clues and more or less founded on empirical data.
The (Limited) Success of Profiling
Profiling has its beginnings in the works of Arthur Conan Doyle, who depicted itas the result of the detective’s particular logic ability, innate in origin and amateur innature. It was subsequently proposed as a method of scientific research via the con-struction of theories and methods that work out the relationships between criminalacts and the behavioral features of those who commit them, through the formulationof hypotheses that can be proved or disproved (Holmes & De Burger, 1988).Particular concepts have been formulated from this point of view: The modusoperandi (MO) of the criminal, comprising all of the actions carried out by theoffender in committing the crime, will be deduced from the crime scene, a behaviorthat is learnt, dynamic, and continuously evolving (Douglas, Ressler, Burgess, &
 
Verde, Nurra / Criminal Profiling 3
Hartman, 1986; Turco, 1990; Turvey, 1999). The importance of analyzing the MOlies in
linkage
; another important aspect in analyzing the MO is
 staging 
, that is tosay, alterations made to the scene of the crime by the offender in an attempt to mis-lead investigators. Moreover, a relevant concept is that of the
 signature
, meaningthose elements present at the scene that are not inherent in the crime itself but thatcan say a great deal about the offender’s personality (Douglas et al., 1986). In thisregard, the possibility of inferring the hallmark features of any sexual perversion onthe part of the offender is of particular interest: Particular importance has beenattached to the interpretative hypothesis that looks to connect the aspect of signaturewith the characteristics of such perverse fantasies, and therefore to infer the latterfrom the former.However, in the literature there is some disagreement as to which crimes are bestsuited to profiling practices (for a detailed analysis, see Crabbé, Decoene, &Vertommen, 2008): inexplicable crimes, or crime scenes in which “mad” or psycho- pathological elements can be postulated (Holmes & Holmes, 1996), or serial crimes(Douglas et al., 1986), which should enable linkage analysis to be performed.Violent and serial crimes of an aggressive and sexual nature should therefore be bestsuited to such practices. By contrast, IP states that other crimes, such as theft and burglary, are also amenable to profiling (Canter, 2004).Another well-known characteristic of crimes suited to profiling is their sexualnature. Apart from rape, which is sexual by definition, the sexual motive is alsothought to play a major role in homicide (Meloy, 2000). In this regard, Prentky et al.(1989) found that 86% of serial sex murderers had fantasies of sexual violence andmurder, as against only 23% of non–serial sex murderers. What constitutes a sexual behavior however needs to be defined: It is clear that adopting a psychoanalyticalmatrix (as the FBI operatives probably do) leads us to define every serial homicideas sexual (Ressler, Burgess, & Douglas, 1988), whereas the adoption of a more behavioral, or behavioristic, definition will reduce the number of murders defined inthis way. Indeed, there is divergence between IP and CSA with respect to this dimen-sion. Canter (1994) stresses the killer’s need to control and to subjugate the victim,rather than the sexual motive in the strict sense. Egger (1998) also emphasizes theneed to control, which can easily transform rape into murder. These positions can,however, be reconciled if we consider Muller’s (2000) assertion that “a more currentview of both serial murder and serial rape is that it is not about sexual gratification per se but rather about the exercise of power and control over the victim,” and thatthe definition of 
 sexual 
“might be interpreted in the context of the killer’s attempt tosexually control and dominate his victim” (pp. 244-245).What emerges from the above is that serial crime of a sexual nature (in the sensedefined above) appears to be particularly suited to profiling, in that it often involvesacting out perverse sexual fantasies, which are characterized by their immutability.In other words, in such cases the intersituational constancy of action (the definitionand use of this term will be seen later) can be classed as high.
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