10.4 SUMMARY
Both offender profiling and crime linkage can be of great benefit in detecting offenders, but equally both can divert police investigations down the “wrong track” if the advice given is incorrect (Goodwill et al., 2009; Grubin et al., 2001).
The linking of crimes together to form a series based on behavioural similarity is called crime linkage analysis. It is widely practiced but rarely discussed in the popular media.
The prediction of offender characteristics from crime scene behaviour is referred to as offender profiling but its practice is not as uniform as this definition would suggest.
Several schools of thought regarding how a person’s characteristics should be profiled from crime scene behaviour have developed; however, these are making way for a more integrated approach to profiling.
A broader range of behavioural investigative advice is now offered to the police, which incorporates offender profiling and crime linkage analysis.
Both crime linkage and offender profiling have been evaluated against the principle of evidence-based practice. Whilst the behavioural consistency and distinctiveness assumptions of offender profiling (in its narrowest sense) and crime linkage have received some support from psychological research, these studies have their limitations and do not yet reflect the reality of the task faced by practitioners. Investigations of the homology assumption have been less successful.
The importance of the situation in producing behaviour through its interaction with the person has long been recognised in psychological research of non-criminal behaviour. This suggests that a more complex view of the relationship between criminal actions and offender characteristics is needed.
ESSAY/DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
How does the media portrayal of offender profiling differ from actual practice?
Critically evaluate the empirical evidence for the assumptions underpinning crime linkage and offender profiling.
How do the different schools of thought in offender profiling differ from one another?
If you received funding to conduct a research project on offender profiling or crime linkage, what study would you choose to conduct and why? You should critique the scope and quality of the previous research in arriving at your answer.
ANNOTATED READING LIST
Alison, L. J., Goodwill, A., Almond, L., van den Heuvel, C., & Winter, J. (2010). Pragmatic solutions to offender profiling and behavioural investigative advice. Legal and Criminological Psychology, 15, 115–132. A good outline of behavioural investigative advice and how “offender profiling” has evolved.
Alison, L., & Rainbow, L. (2011). Professionalizing offender profiling. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. Provides a detailed overview of how behavioural investigative advice functions in practice, the underpinning academic literature and future research priorities.
Alison, L., West, A., & Goodwill, A. (2004). The academic and the practitioner: Pragmatists’ views of offender profiling. Psychology, Public Policy and Law, 10, 71–101. Proposes the need for integration of the different “factions” within offender profiling and outlines principles for constructing an offender profile with reference to a real case.
Boon, J. C. W. (1997). The contribution of personality theories to psychological profiling. In J. L. Jackson & D. A. Bekerian (Eds.), Offender profiling: Theory, research and practice (pp. 43–59). Chichester, UK: Wiley. Using case studies this chapter illustrates how personality theory can be associated with salient case details to generate hypotheses about offender characteristics.
Canter, D., Alison, L, Alison, E., & Wentink, N. (2004). The organized/disorganized typology of serial murder: Myth of model? Psychology, Public Policy and Law, 10, 293–320. A detailed critique and empirical test of the organised/disorganised typology.
Herndon, J. S. (2007). The image of profiling: Media treatment and general impressions. In R. N. Kocsis (Ed.), Criminal profiling: International theory, research and practice (pp. 303–323). Totowa, NJ: Humana Press. A review of how offender profiling has been portrayed in a variety of popular media.
Woodhams, J., & Bennell, C. (2015). Crime linkage: Theory, research, and practice. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press. The only book dedicated to crime linkage, which contains contributions from leading academic experts and practitioners on a range of topics associated with the behavioural linking of crime.
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