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Debates in Criminal Profiling Today

By something as simple as turning on a television or reading a newspaper, one would

find it difficult to avoid the term “Criminal Profiling”. From popular television dramas, such

as Law & Order or C.S.I., to exclusive news scoops, the public seems to be fascinated with

this concept. But, what exactly is Criminal Profiling? The FBI refers to criminal profiling as

“criminal investigative analysis” (O’Toole 44), and now employs criminal investigative

analysists, or profilers, to assist the bureau in solving and preventing crimes. The emerging

field is not without its critics, however. The criticisms of criminal profiling run across

almost every aspect one could possibly imagine, from lack of scientific evidence (Kocsis 149),

to contributing to the enormous increase in minority incarceration (Harcourt 107). Through

all of these criticisms, one thing remains clear: criminal profiling is here to stay. However,

just how useful of a tool is it? After a brief overview of the history of criminal profiling, and

a discussion of some of the criticisms, it will be apparent that while profiling is

underdeveloped, it is indeed a useful tool.

When discussing the history of profiling, one would be remiss in their portrayal

without mentioning the infamous case of New York City’s Mad Bomber, a serial arsonist by

the name of George Metesky. In this now classic 1960’s case, psychiatrist and criminologist

James Brussel (Douglas et al 404) provided one of the very first criminal profiles used to solve

a crime in the United States:

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“Look for a heavy man. Middle-aged. Foreign born. Roman Catholic. Single. Lives

with a brother or sister. When you find him, chances are he’ll be wearing a double-

breasted-suit. Buttoned.”

With this short description, which was extraordinarily accurate with the exception that

Metesky lived with two of his sisters, police were able to apprehend the suspect and close the

case (O’Toole 45). As Brussel explained (Douglas et al 404):

“A psychiatrist usually studies a person and makes some reasonable predictions about

how that person may react to a specific situation and about what he or she may do in

the future. What is done in profiling is to reverse this process. Instead, by studying

an individual’s deeds one deduces what kind of person the individual might be.”

Brussel, however, was not the first to pioneer such an idea, crossing from the realm of theory

to practical application. In 1960, a psychologist by the name of Palmer published research

from a three-year study in which he analyzed 51 convicted murderers. From his analysis, he

constructed the “typical” murderer (Douglas et al 404); this study has been since replicated

numerous times. So, while Brussel may not have been the first to utilize psychology in this

fashion, his particular usage has earned him enough recognition to be mentioned in two

unrelated sources.

Douglas and his associates make an important distinction; the methods of Palmer, and

even Brussel, are a far cry from the methods utilized by agencies such as the FBI today.

Douglas classified Brussel’s and Palmer’s works as psychological profiling, while modern

methods are referred to as criminal profiling (404-405). While the discussion around what

criminal profilers do is treated a touch romantically, comparing them to fictional detectives

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like Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, and others, a rather accurate portrayal of how a

criminal profile is created is also provided. It is acknowledged that a portion of the process is

attributed to subjective behaviors such as intuition, brain storming, and educated guesswork

(405); however, objective, hard evidence is also required. Evidence used to form a profile

includes all manner of things, including aerial photographs of the crime scene, toxicology

reports, victim assessment (such as employment, living habits, lifestyle, etc.), weather

conditions, and even political and social environments surrounding the crime scene. O’Toole

provides a much briefer synopsis of the construction of a criminal profile, citing the four

measured categories of control, emotion, planning and victim/offender risk levels, and

whether the crime scene was organized or disorganized, as the basis of creating a profile (45-

46).

Having now established the briefest of understanding surrounding the creation of a

criminal profile, it is only appropriate to address the first criticism from Kocsis. In

assembling research for this paper, Kocsis appears to be a very vocal critic of the procedural

techniques of criminal profiling, having authored well over 12 articles on the subject in the

past ten years. In one of his more recent articles, Believing is Seeing?, Kocsis conducted a

rather interesting study on whether a bias exists among law enforcement agents for the field

of criminal profiling (149). In several other studies, while he has shown that professional

profilers perform much better statistically than law enforcement officials when constructing

profiles, it is also of interest to note that college science students also perform better than law

enforcement officials as well (150); no specific reasoning has been discovered to explain this

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difference in performance. Kocsis’s main point in his criticism is over the use of circular

reasoning used by profilers to support why their work is necessary; Kocsis cites several

instances in which profilers point to the demand for their abilities as a justification for their

need. In his study, Kocsis recruited 59 Australian police officers and gave each of them a

criminal profile that was constructed from a recent murder in rural South Wales. The

officers were instructed that the study was to help “explore linguistic features of profiles and

develop writing formats that are preferred by police officers.” The officers were divided into

two groups, with each group receiving the same profile. One group was told that the profile

was prepared by a professional criminal profiler, while the other group was only instructed

that the profile was prepared by someone the investigating detective consulted.

The results of the study are as follows (155):

“Police officers who were told that a profile was written by a professional profiler

perceived higher correspondence between the profile and the actual perpetrator

than police officers shown the same profile but not told that the profilewas written

by a professional profiler. However, police officers evaluations of the content of

the profile other than its accuracy were not affected by knowledge about who

wrote the profile.”

Kocsis concludes that in order for profiling to evolve into a reliable science, subjective bias

on behalf of those who consult profilers, as found in his study, must be eliminated (158).

Bernard Harcourt provides a much different criticism of criminal profiling. Where

Kocsis focused on the psychology and methodology of profiling, Harcourt centers, instead,

on the philosophical and social ramifications of any sort of profiling. His rather lengthy

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article deconstructs the shift of American criminal justice from a paradigm of rehabilitation

and individualism, to the modern paradigm we have today; one of incapacitation and

generalization. In one of the plethora of examples he gives in describing this shift, he

explains how the federal criminal code has expanded from 183 separate offenses in 1873 to

over 3,000 in 2000 (109). Harcourt also argues that profiling is a direct result of the paradigm

shift; as law enforcement has become more bureaucratic, it has taken a managerial approach

to crime as “it seeks to regulate levels of deviance, not intervene or respond to individual

deviants or social malformations,” (113). In other words, “corrections” should no longer be

considered part of the criminal justice system, as it is now a system in which “the language of

probability and risk supercedes any interest in clinical diagnoses” (114).

While Harcourt’s treatment of profiling is in a sense much broader than the

individualistic profiling methods used to solve crimes, he does raise the interesting point that

“police will find crime wherever they look. If they spend more time in minority

communities, they will find more crime there: ‘whom they catch depends on where they

look.’” (125). Harcourt has also captured what I believe is the key to understanding why

criminal profiling has become so popular with not only law enforcement, but through the

extension of public interaction with law enforcement, American society as a whole: It

resembles an actuarial method. Harcourt has made it abundantly clear just how necessary

actuarial methods are in law enforcement today, with his criticism of the dehumanization of

the process; it is only natural then, that this new method of solving difficult crimes which

resembles applied probability is so popular.

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Many more criticisms of criminal profiling exist; many more will probably arise as the

popularity of the method increases. However, I firmly believe that with refinement and a

solid, objective base, these criticisms can be reconciled, along with the methodology, into a

reliable applied science. Even in the primitive scientific state that criminal profiling exists in

today, questionably reliable results can be attained. If Harcourt is correct though, and

profiling is popular as a sub-extension of his paradigm shift, then profiling is indeed the

newest permanent part of the criminal justice system.

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Works Cited

Kocsis, Richard N. “Believing Is Seeing? Investigating the Perceived Accuracy of Criminal

Psychological Profiles..” International journal of offender therapy and comparative

criminology 48.2 2004: 149-160. 30 Nov. 2007

<http://ijo.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/48/2/149>.

Douglas, John E, Robert K. Ressler, Ann W. Burgess, et al. “Criminal Profiling from Crime

Scene Analysis.” Behavioral Sciences & the Law 4.4 Sept. 1986: 401-421. 30 Nov. 2007

< http://tinyurl.com/2yasv5>.

Harcourt, Bernard E. “The Shaping of Chance: Actuarial Models and Criminal Profiling at

the Turn of the Twenty-First Century..” The University of Chicago law review 70.1

2003: 105-128. 30 Nov. 2007

<http://tinyurl.com/227yr6>.

O’Toole, Mary E. “Criminal Profiling: The FBI Uses Criminal Investigative Analysis TO

SOLVE CRIMES..” Corrections Today 61.1 Feb. 1999: 44-49. 30 Nov. 2007

<http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=1722353&site=ehost

-live>.