Lecture 10: Criminal Profiling & Crime Scene Analysis

Question 1

What is the crime investigative process?

Answer 1

Question 2

What are the only ways to solve a crime?

Answer 2

• Witnesses, confessions, physical evidence
• One or all can solve a crime, but the more the better
• Note: profiling is not included in this list

Question 3

What are self-solves?

Answer 3

• Most crimes are seen by police as ‘self-solvers’ – the evidence points to the culprit
  
  • Or the culprit confesses
• Rare that police have problems identifying suspects and organizing information collected
• However, sometimes crimes are out of the norm for what the police usually investigate (unusual crimes)

Question 4

What is profiling and how do you create a criminal profile?

Answer 4

• profiling: “the process of drawing inferences about a criminal’s personality, behaviour, motivation, and demographic characteristics based on crime scenes and other evidence”
• Look at evidence, police and autopsy reports, crime scene photos, i.e., learn everything about the offender
• Use inductive and deductive reasoning, experience of violent behaviour, facts of particular case, and statistical probabilities
  
  • Profiling should be trying to move towards scientific methods and parameters and not done through intuition

Question 5

What is criminal profiling used for?

Answer 5

• Is offered as a support services to police officers investigating violent crimes
• Used to: (1) expedite apprehension, (2) limit potential victimization, and (3) limit financial and human resources
• Easier to get an expert than to get people who, although they have the capability of figuring it out, to muddle through the process

Question 6

What crimes are suitable for profiling?

Answer 6

• Offender demonstrated form of psychopathology
• Unusual, bizarre, violent, sexual, and repetitive (serial) crimes
• Rapes and sadistic sexual assaults
• “Random” arsons and bombings

Question 7

What is profile analysis based on?

Answer 7

• Empirically based on:
• 1) Previous data - Offender Typologies, Psychological Profiling of Convicts
  
  • Have to be careful with this because obviously not everyone with the same mental illness is going to be the same person, but with rigid personality types there’s slightly more predictability
• 2) Current data - Offender Profiling, Crime Scene Profiling

Question 8

What is offender typology?

Answer 8

• Empirical data is collected in order to collate a picture of the characteristics of those involved in certain crimes
  
  • e.g. Are there similarities between serial killers, mass murderers, etc.?
  • Often reached through psychological profiling

Question 9

[T] What are the four different hunting typologies?

Answer 9

• The hunter looks for his victims within a geographic space that includes his residence.
• The poacher prefers to operate away from his home (e.g., in another city) when committing his crimes.
• The troller is an opportunistic offender who comes across his victims while engaging in his daily routines.
• Finally, the trapper uses his position (e.g., coach, photographer) to lure or set traps (e.g., want ads) to ensnare his victims.

Question 10

What is psychological profiling?

Answer 10

• Standard personality tests are used together with interviewing to create a picture of a certain type of offender for certain types of crimes

Question 11

What is offender profiling?

Answer 11

• Studying behaviour that is exhibited at a crime, or a series of crimes, which allows for inferences to be made about a likely offender about how they would behave at another crime scene

Question 12

What is crime scene profiling used for?

Answer 12

• Information from the scene of the crime (physical and other evidence) combined with previously collected empirical evidence can help generate a full picture of the unknown offender
• We do this to compare against a list of suspects that have been identified already
  
  • Profiling is not used to pick people at random

Question 13

What is deductive reasoning?

Answer 13

• Predictions about offender based on crime scene evidence
• Problem: can make predictions that seem to make sense but are incorrect
  
  • Have to always try and link it back to some sort of physical evidence
  • If the logical foundation is flawed, the rest of your analysis may be flawed

Question 14

What is inductive reasoning?

Answer 14

• Predictions about offender based on statistical comparison to similar offenders
• These predictions are based on statistical likelihood and probability
  
  • Have to make sure that these crimes aren’t only face-value similar
  • e.g. Having two offenders who are attacking children isn’t specific enough; someone targeting only male 4 year olds vs. female 10 year olds is going to be quite a different offender
• Obviously the more offenders we have to compare to the more accurate this prediction will be, but predictions will (fortunately) be limited if there aren’t many similar criminals

Question 15

[T] What has Kocsis (2004, 2005) found in regards to the accuracy of criminal profiling?

Answer 15

• “trained profilers, psychologists, detectives, science students, and professed psychics were compared on their ability to provide accurate information about the likely killer in a murder case”
• “the profilers were slightly better than the others at guessing the physical attributes of the murderers.
• However, the profilers were less accurate than the other groups at inferring the thought processes, social habits, and personal history of the murderers.
• Even when the profilers performed better than the other groups, their accuracy rates were fairly low, generally less than 50%”

Question 16

[T] What are the issues with the basic assumptions of psychological criminal profiling?

Answer 16

• 1) “crime scene characteristics do not seem to fit into neatly bound categories such as ‘organized’ or ‘disorganized’”
  
  • “An examination of archival data concerning crimes perpetrated by serial killers found no support for this dichotomy”
• 2) “particular crime scene characteristics do not appear to be reliably associated with particular criminal personality types”
• 3) “referring to vague abilities such as ‘instinct’ or ‘intuition’ or ‘experience’ should not be mistaken for clear explanations of the inference process”

Question 17

[T] What are the dangers of stereotyping and discrimination in psychological criminal profiling?

Answer 17

• Tunnel vision—if “investigators rely on that profile, their focus will be diverted from plausible suspects who do not fit the profile” → “misleading profiles may enable criminals to evade capture”
• “Being viewed as a suspect in a particular crime on the basis of a subset of markers that include race and/or religion is referred to as racial profiling”
  
  • e.g. Black people “driving an expensive car or driving in a certain neighbourhood”
  • e.g. “Airline travel and crossing borders are also contentious situations for people of Middle Eastern background”

Question 18

What is the basis of David Canter’s statistical approach?

Answer 18

• Statistically derived relationships between crime scene behaviour and offender characteristics are generated from similar solved crimes and apprehended criminals
  
  • Examines bivariate relationships between single crime behaviours and single offender characteristics (or clusters) to find common characteristics
  • In constructing the profile, this database is used to make predictions about the characteristics of the unknown offender
• A research-oriented approach, found as a fix to the FBI’s profiling method, which was based on intuitive methods that usually worked but not actual research
• Offender profiling should be firmly rooted in the discipline of empirical psychology
  
  • They both aim to predict future behaviour based on what we know of their characteristics (as based on psychometric tests)

Question 19

What are the 5 stages of Canter’s statistical approach?

Answer 19

Stage 1: Data Assimilation

Stage 2: Crime Scene Classification

Stage 3: Crime Scene Reconstruction

Stage 4: Signature

Stage 5: Profile Generation

Question 20

What is the relationship between behaviour and personality?

Answer 20

• Thinking directs behaviour: Crimes may reflect key personality and lifestyle characteristics of offenders
  
  • Much in the same way that our regular activities, habits, and the way we keep and decorate our homes reflects something about our personalities
• Behaviour reflects personality: look at actions before, during and after a crime (or any situation, in psychology generally)
  
  • Look at what offender chose to do and what he chose not to do
    
    • Their behavioural fingerprint or signature
  • What did he do that he did not have to?
    
    • Comparing them to a non-clinical population
    • Why were they compelled to do this extra thing?
    • e.g. Why did they cover the body after killing the person?

Question 21

What is stage 1 of Canter’s statistical approach?

Answer 21

• Stage 1: Data Assimilation
• The profiler must collate all available information possible about the crime
• Can include:
  
  • Written materials (victim or witness statements, autopsy reports)
  • Visual materials (CCTV, video footage, photographs)

Question 22

What is stage 2 of Canter’s statistical approach?

Answer 22

• Stage 2: Crime Scene Classification
• The crimes are classified into a type using the collated material
• Organized vs. disorganized

Question 23

What is an organized crime scene/killer?

Answer 23

• organized killers: “carefully selecting and stalking their victims and planning out what they will do to them.
  
  • They show patience and self-control by waiting for the right opportunity and cleaning up evidence after the murder.
  • They also tend to use more elaborate rituals involving torturing the victim and dismembering the corpse”
• Defining characteristic: control
  
  • More important than sexual gratification, even in sexual crimes
  • Points to wanting to assert power, probably related to childhood trauma
• Psychopathic? This person may be/have:
  
  • Narcissistic and remorseless
  • Pride in appearance, articulate, outgoing, charming
• Generally older, more mature, leave general area (drive)
  
  • If they’re organized in their crime scene, they can probably afford things like the proper murder tools and a car to get away
  • The perpetrator is probably practiced, which means they’re probably not that young

Question 24

[T] What are disorganized killers?

Answer 24

• disorganized killers: “tend to be impulsive, picking their victims at random, acting from sudden rage or following commands to kill from voices in their heads”
• “more likely to use any weapon that happens to be available, to leave the weapon at the crime scene, and to use the dead body for sexual purposes”

Question 25

What is stage 3 of Canter’s statistical approach?

Answer 25

• Stage 3: Crime Scene Reconstruction
• Crime scene is not a simple fixed event
• Result of a complex set of circumstance
• Must be understood as a dynamic process involving a minimum of two people: the (unknown) offender and victim

Question 26

What is stage 4 of Canter’s statistical approach?

Answer 26

• Stage 4: Signature
• Seeking to identify the psychological signature (behavioural fingerprint) of the offender
  
  • Used to distinguish them from other psychopaths
• Signature relates to the reason for committing the crimes, which is unlikely to change since they’re based on psychosexual needs, personality, and fantasies
• Psychosexual needs differ since they’re based on different patterns of abuse
  
  • When the abuse started, what kind of abuse, etc. determines what kind of psychopath you’ll be

Question 27

What is the modus operandi?

Answer 27

• Purpose of the modus operandi: (1) ensures success, (2) protects identity, (3) facilitates escape
• The criminal’s premeditation (getting supplies, stalking, staking location)
• Non-psychopathic criminal, e.g. bank robber: might tell everyone to take off their pants and get on the floor while threatening them with a gun
  
  • If people are naked and laying on the floor, they’re probably not paying attention to the criminal’s face
• A psychopathic bank robber may also take pictures of the half-naked people so that they can use this material to fantasize about later on
• Every criminal has an M.O.
  
  • But a signature isn’t as useful for non-psychopathic criminals because their personalities are too generic

Question 28

What is stage 5 of Cander’s statistical approach?

Answer 28

• Stage 5: Profile Generation
• With the modus operandi, signature, and also an inspection for the presence of any staging of the crime, the profiler moves on to generate a profile
• Profiler is not given the list of suspects until they’re finished generating the profile
• Not necessarily psychological in nature and all the hypotheses are drawn together

Question 29

What occurs in the post-profiling stages?

Answer 29

Offender apprehension and crime linkage

Question 30

What is involved in offender apprehension?

Answer 30

• Prioritize large numbers of suspects
• Focus on the most probable suspect(s)

Question 31

What is involved in crime linkage?

Answer 31

• An analytical technique where potential crime series are identified through the analysis of the offender’s crime scene behaviour
  
  • A form of behavioural analysis used to identify crimes committed by the same offender, through their behavioural similarity
• Deals in probabilities
  
  • Not certainties or predictions
• Underlying assumptions: (1) homology, (2) consistency, (3) distinctiveness

Question 32

How does homology relate to crime linkage?

Answer 32

• Agreement between personality and behaviour
• We only have behaviour and we are assuming it’s caused by person’s personality (not just situation the because its repeated and situations not always the same)
• Psychology backs this up

Question 33

How does the offender consistency hypothesis relate to crime linkage?

Answer 33

• Offender consistency hypothesis: The assumption that offenders will commit their crimes in a relatively consistent manner
• This means that their crimes should be similar (but not the same) in terms of the behaviour they display
• Offenders do not have to commit their crimes in a perfectly consistent manner for the crimes of one offender to be distinguished from another
• It would be very unlikely for offenders to be perfectly consistent in their crime scene behaviour
• Why? Not perfectly consistent due to:
  
  • Changing environment (the situation)
    
    • Even committing it in the exact same place every time, you can’t be sure that the environment won’t change (e.g. can’t be completely sure that a witness won’t show up every time)
  • The interpersonal nature of their crimes
    
    • The victim won’t react the same way every single time
  • The evolving nature of the criminal offender due to experience
    
    • Learning from their past crimes and applying new ideas/strategies

Question 34

How does behavioural distinctiveness relate to crime linkage?

Answer 34

• In addition to being relatively consistent in their crimes there is also an assumption about distinctiveness
  
  • The principle that offenders commit their crimes in different ways to one another
• That is, intra-individual behavioural variation (within one individual) will be less than inter-individual (between different separate individuals) behavioural variation

Question 35

What are the considerations to be made during crime linkage?

Answer 35

• Making sure the crimes are linked
  
  • Identify behaviours displayed at each crime scene
  • Identify behaviours that are common, consider how they may differ
• When repeated behaviours are identified
  
  • What do you think we need next?
• What are the baselines?
  
  • How rare are the behaviours?
  • Need stats on how often a given behaviour is displayed by all offenders
• If a behaviour is relatively rare and it occurs across all offences in the potential series, you can be more confident that these crimes were committed by the same offender (and therefore represent a series)

Question 36

What are the advantages of crime linkage?

Answer 36

• Sex crimes for example are notoriously hard to prosecute
  
  • Often, we think it comes down to he said, she said
  • Victim credibility (and social framework testimony) can be pivotal to successful prosecution
• Having multiple people come forward, who haven’t really spoken to each other beforehand, and they all have similar details in their testimony
  
  • … it’s likely that person did it
• With crime linkage, an offender can be prosecuted for a series of offences
  
  • Each victim gains credibility from the others

Question 37

[T] What is the Violent Crime Linkage Analysis System (ViCLAS)?

Answer 37

• Violent Crime Linkage Analysis System (ViCLAS): developed from useful “automated case linkage systems (computer systems that compile crime reports and find similarities between cases in different regions)”
  
  • Response to the problem of linkage blindness: the inability of law enforcement agencies across different jurisdictions to note that the crimes committed in their respective jurisdictions may in fact be linked
• “ViCLAS operates by having investigators complete an extensive questionnaire of crime details that were obtained from the investigation”
  
  • Info then “input into a database of previously solved and unsolved cases”
  • “trained specialists analyze the data to look for clues that may link the cases to each other”

Question 38

What is geographic profiling?

Answer 38

• geographic profiling: “a computerized investigative tool that can be used to predict where an unknown offender of a serial crime is likely to reside”
• Analyzes linked crime locations to determine the most probable area of offender residence
• Helps manage information in serial crime investigations
• It’s very accurate, so long as you have enough data points

Question 39

What is the distance decay function?

Answer 39

• Predicts a buffer zone (where the offender most likely wouldn’t commit crimes) based on distance to the crime scene in order to try and locate where the offender lives
• You generally wouldn’t commit crimes that are really close to your house because it would be very easy to find you
• But you probably won’t go too far either because it’s inaccessible

Question 40

What is the Brantingham crime pattern theory?

Answer 40

• Similar to the distance decay function, but factors in area of work and recreation as buffer zones
• People in your places of work and recreation will probably recognize you, so it’s a bad idea to commit crimes in these areas too

Question 41

What is a jeopardy surface and how is it used to determine likely offender residency?

Answer 41

• Jeopardy surface: A topographical representation of where the crime most likely did not take place
• You can add a layover of a map onto the area of the jeopardy surface
  
  • Then you take the list of suspects and place their home addresses over this map
  • You then prioritize the people who are in the yellow to red area
  • Just because they’re in the red zone doesn’t mean they did it, but there’s a very high likelihood

Question 42

What are the limitations of geographic profiling techniques?

Answer 42

• 1) “the quality of the underlying data set and its fit with the case under investigation”
  
  • e.g. In a sniping case, the killers were transients who had no real home base—“Because the computer program had assumed a home base, it was incapable of supplying useful information”
• 2) Although statistical programs are more empirical, they may not necessarily be more accurate at prediction & interpretation with this kind of info
  
  • e.g. Taylor et al. (2009): gave “200 undergraduates with maps showing three, five, or seven crime locations. The predictive accuracy of the students was again comparable with the computerized actuarial method”
    
    • Also, the predictive accuracy was greatest at 5 crime locations for both students & the computer, contradicting the idea that more information provides better results

Question 43

How does psychological profiling compare to geographic profiling?

Answer 43

• One isn’t necessarily better than the other
• Psychological profiling can go wrong when people rely on their “gut instinct”; it’s more quantitative now and we have to make sure it stays quantitative
• Geographic profiling is relatively new and has always been quantitative

Question 44

[T] What is the legal status of profiling?

Answer 44

• “Probative evidence provides information that is useful in assessing whether or not a person committed a crime”
  
  • Admitting testimony re: profiling needs to be weighed for: 1) its use value in the court, and 2) its relevance to the case/potential prejudicial effects
• In most cases, psychiatric testimony on the likely profile of a perpetrator have been denied by the Canadian courts due to their nonsubstantive scientific evidence

Question 45

What is the future of profiling?

Answer 45

• Continued empirical research is needed
• influenced by clinical experience
• Police operational needs should focus the profiling research agenda
• Scientific limits need to be better established
• Integration of investigative techniques (behavioural/behavioural, behavioural/forensic)