Chapter 5: Criminal Profiling and Psychological Autopsies

Process of Profiling
• Profiling (reclassification)
o Drawing inferences on criminal's personality, behavior, motivation, and
demographics based on crime scene and other evidence
• Profiles
o Developed by FBI-BSU
o Assist investigators
o Emphasize the "signature aspect of the crime"
o Are popular but unvalidated techniques

Research on Profiling
• 1990: Early experimental study; differences in trained profilers and other groups. But
only for sex offender case
• 2000s: Profilers accuracy rates generally less than 50%
• 2002: No discernible demographic resemblance between criminals who committed very
similar crimes

Problems and Promise

• Basic assumptions are not valid
• Cross-situational consistency is suspect
• Ambiguous and general speculations remain
• Profiles result in tunnel syndrome
• Profilers area sometimes based on stereotypes

Alternative to Intuition
• Geographical profiling (criminal spatial mapping)
o Criminals often stay in and are likely to be caught in a geographical comfort zone
o As the number of crimes increases so does usefulness of technique
• Uncovering patterns in movement and environment
o Computer programs
• Predator; dragnet
o Statistical techniques
• Anchor points
• Buffer zone distance decay
• More promising that the intuitive personality profiling
• A Geomap of a criminal's activities:
o The most distant shaded areas around the periphery are less likely to include an
offender's residence, and the shaded areas in the center are more likely to
include an offender's residence
• Behavioral investigators
o Advice offered to investigators on media use, suspect questioning, and potential
for serial crime involvement
 o Emphasis based on useful information provision

Famous Profiles
• Jack the Ripper (1988)
o First subject of a criminal profile
• Olympic Bomber (1996)
o Incorrectly accused by criminal profile
• Mad Bomber (1957)
o Detailed and accurate profile captured suspect

Characteristics of Serial Killers

• Research-based list of recurring patterns
o Impaired rational thinking from brain injury
o Childhood maladjustment, often animal cruelty
o Male with average intelligence
o Domination of victim and drug use before killing them
o Preference for victim type
o Obsession with violent pornography
• No characteristic list describes every serial killer
o Visionary: Are psychotic, hears voices, sees visions
o Mission-oriented: Kill people they believe are evil
o Hedonistic: Kill others for thrill
o Power-oriented: Get satisfaction from victim capture and control before killing

Organized v. Disorganized Serial Killer

Visionary Organized
• Andrea Yates
o Had psychosis, planned bodies
o Doing it because of Satin
Mission Oriented
• Reason
Humanistic
• For fun
Power oriented
• Dominant over someone

Precise Profile or Sloppy Stereotypes

• Stereotypes or vague profiles are problematic at trial
• Probative evidence versus prejudicial impacted weighed
• Judges' decision to admit or exclude often based on personal subjective profiles
• Court notice of misuse occurs
• Book Case
• Father who made daughter strip
• Not really used a lot, hard to understand
 • Used more in civil cases
• Letters, emails, work history, S/O, journal, diary, social media, status's,

Profiling the time and place of future crimes

• Predictive policing techniques
• Combination of traditional and unorthodox data to generate predictions of
future crime locations
• Predictive software
• Computer or human generated direction can occur
• Factors leading to crime prompt guesses about future risk
• Predictive strategies
• Like how Memphis's Blue CRUSH system) have helped staunch crime

Psychological Autopsies
• Involves attempts to dissect and examine psychological state of individual prior to death
• Based on several sources of information
o Records, interviews
• Contains equivocal results
• Courts receptive to results in civil cases but less in criminal cases

Racial profiling
• Using race as indicator of who might be engaged in criminal activity
• Williams, Bazille, et al. v. Alioto et al., 1997
o Important early case; court injunction prevented police from stopping black man
based on case profile
• 2013: Federal judge in Arizona
o Sheriff racially profiled Hispanic drivers and violated their constitutional rights