Holmes and Holmes (1996) provide what is probably the best description of the underlying rationale that the FBI use to profile offenders. The CSA approach, which is primarily applicable to serial murderers, place offenders into two broad categories based on their crime and the crime scene. The two types of offenders are the disorganised asocial offender and the organised non-social offender, although in recent time the FBI tends to refer to these as simply disorganised and organised offenders respectively (e.g. Ressler et al 1988) Ressler states that the simple dichotomy was to enable police who had little or no knowledge of the psychological jargon to understand what the BSU thought was a basic differentiation between the two distinct groups of offenders (Ressler and Shachtman, 1992). Holmes and Holmes (1996) note that this categorisation is particularly applicable to crimes such as rape, sexual assault, mutilation and necrophilia.
The categories.
The disorganised offender will be of low intelligence, often demonstrating some sort of severe psychiatric disturbance, and will have probably have had some kind of contact with the mental health system. He will be socially inept, with few interpersonal relationships out side his immediate family, and will be sexually incompetent, if he has any sexual experience at all. The crime scene of the disorganised offender will often show little or no premeditation, with whatever is at hand used as a weapon, which is usually left on the crime scene. The victim, selected more or less at random will have been quickly overpowered and killed, the killing often showing extreme overkill and brutality (what the FBI refer to a blitz attack, Douglas & Olshaker, 1995). The victim’s face will often be severely beaten in an attempt to dehumanise her, or she will be forced to wear a mask or blind fold. If the victim is sexually assaulted, it will often be post-mortem, with mutilation to the face, genitals and breasts not uncommon. The body will often be left at the murder scene, but if it is removed, it more likely that the offender wants to keep it as a souvenir than to hide evidence. Holmes and Holmes, 1996 Ressler et al., 1988, Ressler & Shachtman, 1992).
The types of offenders who make up both the organised and disorganised dichotomies are relatively straightforward, and are, as the name suggests, organised and disorganised personalities. The organised offender is unusually reasonably intelligent, but an underachiever, with an sporadic education and employment history. He is often married and socially adept, at least at face value, but usually has an antisocial or psychopathic personality. The crime scene left behind an organised offender will show signs of planning and control. The offender will often bring his own weapons and restraints, which he will then take with him after the crime. The victim will be a targeted stranger, ver often female, with the offender either searching for a particular sort of victim or just a victim of convenience. The victim will be often raped and the offender will control the victim by using threats and restraints. The offender will usually torture the victim, killing in a slow painful manner, which the killer will have fantasised about extensively beforehand. The body will be usually hidden, often transported from the place where the killing occurred, and may be dismembered by more forensically aware killers in order to delay identification.
From the analysis of the crime scene, the investigator should be able to determine some of the characteristics of the perpetrator, which will be of use to the investigating police. According to Ressler et al, 1988, criminal profiling is a six stage process. The first stage is referred to as the profiling inputs, and concerns the collection of all the information that might be of use to the solving of the crime. This includes photos of the crime scene, the preliminary police report, information about the victim and of all the collected forensic information. The second stage is the decision process models in which the information is organised and a preliminary analysis is conducted.
The third stage of the profiling process, Crime Assessment, is presumably the inspiration for the profiler in which he attempts to reconstruct the crime in his or her head. This is where the offender attempts to ‘walk in the shoes’ of the perpetrator and the victim, or what the media describe as ‘getting into the mind of the killer’ it is at this stage that the crime is categorised as organised or disorganised. The fourth stage is when the criminal profile is actually constructed. The profile actually attempts to describe the person who committed the offence and strategies for apprehending the offender. The following elements are usually found in a profile: age, race, sex, and general appearance of the offender; the offenders relationship status and any notable points about his relationship history; his likely occupation and any notable features about his or hers employment, education, or military record. The profiler will also includes whether the offender was familiar with the area. This would also include whether the offender is an organised or disorganised personality. It also contains certain strategies for interrogating, identifying and apprehending the offender.
Stage five, the investigation, is where the profiler submits a written report to the agency investigating the crime, which is added to their investigative efforts. If a suspect is identified the profile is deemed to have been successful. If any additional information is given to the profilers, such as new evidence or an another connected murder, the information is give to the profiler so that the new information can be re-evaluated in light of the new data. The sixth stage is The Apprehension, and assumes that the correct offender has been caught. The profiler and the profiling process are evaluated in terms of the actual offender, in order that future profiling may even be more accurate.
One of the most important factors of the CSA model of criminal profiling is the dichotomous categorisation of offenders as organised or disorganised offenders, but how useful is this distinction? Holmes and Holmes (1996) for example, state that these categories are more useful in ‘lust killings’ than in other sorts of serial murder that do not show evidence of sexual motives. Although the concepts of the organised or disorganised offenders are discussed at great length in Ressler, et al, 1988, they do not attempt to use the data from the offenders in their sample of the study conducted to explain or support this typology. Ressler and Shachtman hypothesise that about one third of all serial killers are disorganised offenders, and the remaining two thirds are organised offenders, but offer no data to support the claims. Wilson et al (1997) claim that it is actually a continuum between organised and disorganised than two distinct types, with many offenders falling into the mixed category, displaying features of both the disorganised and organised offenders.
The real truth is, we simply do not know. There have never been any published empirical studies on the differences between various subtypes of serial offenders. The organised/disorganised typology is the brain child of the BSU, and although they have published information about it, they have never actually articulated any theoretical basis for the typology on which a study might be based.
Ressler et al provides an excellent example of how politics and ideology influences one’s objectivity. The FBI, as North America’s premier law enforcement organisation is based upon white middle class conservative views, a fact admitted by many of the agents themselves (Ressler & Shachtman, 1992; Douglas & Olshaker, 1995). It is not surprising that the FBI experts believe that serial killers often come from broken homes, where they are often raised by a single mother, and report daydreaming, masturbation, confusion about sexual preference and an interest of pornography as features of their child hood.
It is also important to remember that the only thing that has been determined so far is a correlation between factors such as abuse or neglect in childhood and serial killers. This does not simply imply that serial offending is caused by having a difficult childhood or an obsession with pornography. Egger (1997) describes one serial killer, Arthur Shawcross, who did not show any evidence of coming from a dysfunctional home or violent family. Rather than Shawcross’s offending being environmental, as the CSA might argue, they appeared to be biological, with Shawcross being involved in a number of serious incidents, some of which involved serious cerebral concussion. This would indeed cast some doubts on the validity of the CSA paradigm of the development of serial offending.
Investigative Psychology, the British Approach.
Unlike the CSA, the IP is more a collection of related theories and hypotheses than a comprehensive methodology. Investigative psychology originated in Britain, mainly due to the work of David Canter, an environmental psychologist, then the head of the Psychology Department at the University of Surrey (Canter, 1989). Canter (1994) reports that he was first approached by the British police in 1985, who were then interested in determining whether psychology had anything to offer police to help them apprehend criminals. Although he observes that the police are often resistant to anything new, or outsiders telling them how they should do their jobs, Canter’s advice proved to be ver helpful to the police in catching John Duffy. Duffy, who was dubbed the ‘Railway Rapist’ by the media, committed approximately twenty five rapes and three murders in London 1982 and 1986 (Nowikowski, 1995). Since that case, Canter has worked on over sixty murder and rape cases in the United Kingdom (Casey, 1993).
Canter, (1989) claims that psychology is directly applicable to crime as crime can be seen as an interpersonal transaction, in which criminal are performing actions in a social context (often between themselves and their victim). He argues that our methods of psychological interaction are ingrained into our personalities and reasons that actions the criminal performs while engaging in a crime are a direct reflections of the way they will act in other, more normal, circumstances. He postulated five broad approaches with which psychology can be used to profile offenders.
The first is interpersonal coherence, which proposes that actions performed by criminals make sense within the criminal’s own psychology. For instance, the criminal will select victims that are consistent with the important characteristics of people that are important to the offender. The second approach is the significance of time and place. The locations the offender chooses in which to commit the offences will usually have some kind of significance to the offender, people are unlikely to rape in an area unfamiliar to themselves as this is a crime of control, and the offender will not feel in complete control in unfamiliar surroundings.
The third approach, criminal characteristics, involves looking at crimes and offenders, seeing if differences can lead to classifications of offenders into categories and subcategories. Canter does not actually provide an explanation of such classification, but one attempt to do this has been the FBI Classification Manual. Douglas and Olshaker (1995) state ‘we set about to organise and classify serious crimes by their behavioural characteristics and explain them in a way that a strict psychological approach such s the DSM has never been able to’. (p.346). Canter (1994) is quite critical of the FBI approach, especially in the organised and disorganised dichotomies used by the FBI, arguing that there is too much overlap between the two categories for it to be helpful and that they have no theoretical backing.
The fourth approach criminal career seeks to take advantage of the observation that criminal do not change the way in which they commit crimes throughout their criminal careers, although they may escalate the crimes. The fifth approach is that of forensic awareness. When a serial offender takes steps to cover his tracks, such as forcing the rape victim to take a bath, or combing her pubic hair to remove any traces of the perpetrator, it is a clear sign that he has had some previous contact with the police. This ‘should’ be a direct indication of the type of contact the offender has had with the police and ‘should’ therefore narrow down the search.
While this has been a fairly brief overview of some of Canter’s suggestions, one particular area, that of space and time has received a reasonable amount of attention and has been empirically tested. Wilson et al (1997) reports that the ‘circle hypothesis’ (as it is referred to in Canter, 1994) is one of the more prominent of the IP theories. This approach is built upon the hypothesis that serial killers tend to operate on familiar surroundings, in a recent paper, Goodwin and Canter (1997) investigated the spatial behaviour of 54 serial killers in the United States, each of which had killed at least ten times. They found in their sample that the serial killers used in their sample were likely to encounter and abduct nearly all of their victims close to their own home. The offender would then travel some distance, usually in a different direction for each offence, to dump the body. They also found, however, as the number of offences progressed, the offender was more likely to dump the bodies close to home, reflecting perhaps a growing confidence with his ability to remain undetected.
While the overall paradigm itself has not been empirically tested, many of the theories that contribute to IP have, in one example Canter and Kirby (1995) look at the conviction history of child molesters. This study investigated the validity of the common assumption that child molesters will have a history of sexually deviant behaviour assaults on children, and that these men will escalate their offending from minor to more serious sexual offences. Interestingly, they found that these assumptions, which are often held by police officers, had no empirical basis. They found that these offenders were more likely to have had convictions for theft and burglary, and violent offences than for prior minor sexual offences. They also found that there was little evidence to suggest escalation from less serious offences. For example, very few men who were child molesters had any history of indecent exposure.
Unlike the CSA, investigative psychology was designed from the beginning with science in mind, but this does not mean that it is a science within itself. Canter and his followers have attempted to use established psychological principles and research methodology in order to create a discipline that is empirically sound and open to peer review. IP has a great deal of potential to become a science, but it still has a long way to go before it will be recognised as a discipline in itself. Wilson et al (1997) claims that one of the main problems with the IP approach to profiling is that it does not actually tell us anything new, except to prose new avenues to explore. This is probably a some what extreme view, as applying the application of psychosocial knowledge to criminal investigation potentially has great value.
Even within Britain, Canter is not without his critics. Britton, Copson, Bakcock, and Boon (1997) state ‘it seems to have been assumed by some observers that Canter’s is the only systematic approach to profiling in use in Britain, not least because he says so’. Britton and his colleagues, proponents of the DE model of profiling claim that statistical approaches to profiling, such as is used in IP, are only reliable so long as the data set that they are based upon is reliable.
Examples of profiling that may or may not have worked.
The guardian on October 94 wrote in an article entitled ‘When you ask why, you know who’, by John Grace in which he states that in fact that public’s reputation of offender profiling was severely damaged by the police’s over reliance on its use in the Rachel Nickell murder case. In the Observer in an article entitled ‘Warning Britton can seriously damage your health’. The journalist believed that the murder case was a complete disaster and that the police had no hard evidence beyond the fact that Colin Stagg lived near the common and was a bit weird. The police turned to Paul Britton a psychologist and gave him control of the case. Britton tried to trap Stagg in to confessing that he had in fact killed Rachel Nickell, to an undercover policewoman. Stagg repeatedly denied any such claims, even with the threat of the police woman ending the relationship with him. This evidence would suggest that in fact Britton ‘got it horribly wrong’ and the case against Colin Stagg was thrown out of court. Britton replies in practice that although offender profiling may help the police, there is a danger in overstating its importance.
Mostly (and Britton does not pretend otherwise) the case is solved by traditional policing and scientific methods. In his first big case Britton drew up a pretty accurate portrait of the killer of school girl Dawn Ashworth, but the murder was caught by a combination of DNA testing and a chance remark in a pub. Britton has been involved in a lot of headline cases, including the Abbie Humpheries baby snatching, The James Bulger killing, (but would he have found these killers had there not been video evidence) and the Fred and Rosemary West’s murders. However the failure in the Colin Stagg case appears to be the only prominent mention in reports, in fact the reporters suggest that anyone associated with it would never be taken seriously again.
Wilson and Soothill, (1996) suggest that the running feud between Canter and Britton has made it difficult to state how objective the assessments are of each other, and in some ways they clearly refute the approach taken by the other.
Does profiling actually work?
The Guardian in October an article entitled; Doubts over Killer Profiles in which Duncan Campbell crime correspondent wrote that detectives involved in successful cases believed that offender profiling had led to the identification of the culprit in fewer than three per cent of the investigations. Detective Chief Constable Copson stated that offender profiling was about as accurate as tossing a coin in identifying a criminal. However this is not as bleak as first believed, Copson goes on to say that profiling had led to the identification of 2.7 per cent of the cases, had stimulated new lines of inquiry in 14 per cent and had ‘helped to solve’ 16 per cent of cases. Detectives also said that in 84 per cent of cases the presence of a psychologist had been ‘operationally useful’. Their use had been mainly as ‘reassurance’ to officers about the conclusions they were coming to about the offender and in assisting them to understand the bizarre behaviour patterns of the criminals they were pursuing.
Offender profiling, in all its various guises, is still very much a discipline that has yet to be accepted. Unlike much of psychology or criminology, the accuracy of an offender profile may have profound implications. If a profile of an offender is wrong, or even slightly inadequate, police may be misled, allowing the offender to escape detection for a little while longer and innocent people may be dead as a result. This is not to say that we should ignore profiles, or that police should not use them, but that we should approach profiling with caution. We should not blindly accept or rely something that may not have any relationship to the truth.
In asking profiling to be scientific, we are trying to establish with some reliability whether or not it is of any use to us. Many police officers have shown a great deal of scepticism, partly due to the fact that that they see apprehending offenders as their particular area of expertise, but also because it is still such a poorly developed field (e.g. Davies, 1994). Studies such as those conducted by Pinizzotto and Finkle (1990) suggest that profiling may have some validity. Experimental verification is not what will win the police over, however. Police still insist in using psychics to help them solve difficult cases, although Wiseman and West, (1997) have shown experimentally that there is absolutely no validity to the claims made by psychics in regards to criminal investigations.
The research seems to suggest that IP is easily more scientific that CSA, while IP has produced a testable hypotheses and has several empirical studies to back up its claims, CSA is based mainly upon experience and intuition of police officers, and is not particularly amenable to testing. It is hard to say which approach is the more successful (defining successful as providing information that results in more arrests) as there is no reliable published information on the effectiveness of the various approaches. There is a great deal of anecdotal evidence supporting the CSA, and it is more widely depicted in the press than IP, yet this is not enough to indicate that it is significantly more successful than IP. Clearly the effectiveness of the approaches is a subject in which more investigation is needed.
Building on a solid scientific basis on which profiling can stand, and be empirically testing profiling in both the lab and the field, should not be too difficult. The scientific basis for IP is already present, and rethinking CSA so that it can produce testable hypotheses should not be impossible. However, as long as the FBI has a monopoly on profiling (which it does in most western nations except Britain) and they refuse to share any information, it will be very difficult to prove that it is worthwhile. However the research suggests the same conclusion, no theorist stated that it is useless, the agreement of the usefulness of profiling is not universal but it is considerable among the theorists, who believe that criminal profiling is a useful tool, it is the approach and the scientific basis that is argued.
Eyewitness Testimony.
The use of psychologists in the detection of criminals raises some important issues and opinions of whether the input of psychologists is beneficial to the exposure of the criminal, depends upon the results obtained. The use of psychologists in eyewitness testimony is suggested to be a positive step in improving the eyewitness memory, by using the cognitive interview.
Eysenck states that it is now generally accepted that psychologists can make a valuable contribution to ensuring that justice is done in criminal cases. In the instance of the eyewitness testimony, the way in which the witness is questioned can have severe implications to the ways in which the witness recalls events. Geisselman et al used these considerations to develop what they called the basic cognitive interview. Using these methods the recommendation is that during the police interview the police ‘should’ proceed from free recall to general open-ended questions concluding with questions that are more specific.
The eyewitness reports every thing they see even if they believe that the information to be fragmented. The witness the recalls events from a number of different orders. Geisselman found that using the cognitive interview method, the number of correct statements recalled increased compared to standard police interviews and hypnosis. The cognitive interview has since been modified and is now termed the enhanced cognitive interview, which produced more correct statement than with the standard cognitive interview.
At the practical level, the findings of psychologists are slowly influencing various aspects of the legal process, thus implying that the interventions of psychologists have had an almost beneficial effect in ensuring that criminals are arrested and convicted.
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