Introduction to Criminal Profiling
This English overview for the general public was published in the Basel University law student's journal in January 2000.
For a more scientific introduction in German (auf Deutsch) see my most recent publication, also dealing with legal implications of criminal profiling, or visit the scientific articles page for further references.
Introduction
We have all seen the Hollywood version of profiling in Jonathan Demme's "The Silence of the Lambs", written by Tom Harris. This movie was actually done with the professional assistance of John E. Douglas and Robert K. Ressler, two of the - now retired - leading experts on criminal personality profiling and pioneers of modern criminal investigative analysis. However, this work of fiction is not truly realistic in its portrayal of the serial murderers and their hunters; for instance, Harris combines attributes of several different sorts of offenders - personality dynamics that would be highly unlikely to coexist in one person in real life. This article therefore aims to de-mystify the work and role of real-world profilers.
A major source of research and development on criminal profiling today is the Investigative Support Unit, started as the "Behavioral Science Unit" in the late 1950s by two Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) employees, Howard Teten and Pat Mullany (this remains controversial). Now a part of the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime (NCAVC), which is one of the major components of the Critical Incident Response Group (CIRG), it consists of agents and professionals with training in behavioral or forensic science as well as consultants from the mental-health professions. This unit has amassed large amounts of data on the backgrounds, family characteristics, current behaviors and psychological traits of various types of criminal offenders, partly obtained from interviews with dozens of convicted criminals such as serial murderers. The Investigative Support Unit offers, in addition, specific training to professionals such as detectives, psychologists, and lawyers from all over the world.
In March 1993, INTERPOL established a fully operational crime analysis capability at the General Secretariat - the Analytical Criminal Intelligence Unit (ACIU), which according to INTERPOL had a significant and positive impact on the level of assistance INTERPOL was able to provide to its member countries in combating crime. "The advantage of crime analysis is that it has introduced structures, methods and a uniform set of techniques, e.g. an assessment of the scale and nature of high-volume crime such as burglary, numerous varied activities of an organized crime group such as the "Mafia", or the identification of a lone serial killer", says an ACIU statement. "Crime analysis is", according to INTERPOL's understanding, "a combination of uniform techniques focusing on the development of hypotheses, reconstructing the course of individual criminal incidents, identifying a series of related crimes, understanding criminal networks, and analysing the scope of and patterns in criminal activity".
The purpose of a behavioral profile
Criminal profiling is used mostly by behavioral scientists and the police to narrow down an investigation to those suspects who possess certain behavioral and personality features that are revealed by the way a crime was committed ("behavior reflects personality"; Douglas, J.E., Olshaker, M.). Therefore, the primary goal is to aid local police in limiting and refining their suspect list so they can direct their resources where they might do the most good. Profiling in itself, however, does not identify a specific suspect, i.e. reveal a certain individual, give an address or a phone number. Instead, profilers sketch a general biographical description of the most likely type of unknown suspect.
Another key use of a profile is, when necessary, to go proactive, which means letting the public become a partner in crime solving. The unknown suspect may have displayed some sort of odd behavior to those close to him that will indicated his involvement with the crime. Getting the public, and hopefully those people, to be aware of what they have seen, telling them how to interpret it, and suggest to them to come forward, may solve the case (The Anatomy of Motive, Douglas, J.E., Olshaker, M.).
Profiling in the field of (serial) murder
Multiple murderers are usually divided into three basic categories: serial, mass, and spree killers. In this paragraph, the emphasis is put on the serial killer - someone who has murdered on at least three occasions with so-called emotional cooling-off periods between each incident, whereas a mass murderer kills four or more victims in one location in one incident and the killings are all part of the same emotional experience. Finally, a spree killer is defined as someone who murders at two or more locations with no emotional cooling-off period between the homocides (The Anatomy of Motive, Douglas, J.E., Olshaker, M.).
Along with manipulation, domination, and control (the basic motivation for the crimes), a significant motivator for many serial killers is sexual, even if, as with Son of Sam David Berkowitz, the crimes themselves are not overtly so. A serial killer commits the killings because they emotionally fulfill him. The longer he (almost all serial killers are male) "succeeds" at it, the more confident and better he becomes and then tends to develop a sense of superiority over the police and investigative authorities who so far cannot catch him, and this empowers him even further. By his actions, he attempts to gain control and power over his life and other's lives, and to attain a feeling of success, often for the first time ever in his life. He will be following the media coverage, and probably has a journal where he writes about his crimes and collects all the newspaper articles relating to them. The offender is also likely to mentally relive his killings, often with the help of "trophies", such as a bracelet or a body part he took from his victims, or by visiting his victim's graves, which has become a cliché. Sometimes, later in his "career", the offender may realize that the reality of killing does not live up to his many fantasies and that he lacks the emotional fulfillment he desperately searches for. At this point it is possible that he turns himself in to the authorities or gets sloppy so he can be caught. Unfortunately, many continue to be "compelled" to kill and are eventually caught, or suddenly stop - if, for example, they were arrested for another, smaller crime, or have committed suicide.
But how did they become predators? you may ask. Typically, a significant part of the developmental process of persons showing very violent, antisocial tendencies is the so-called homicidal triad, consisting of enuresis - or bed-wetting - at an inappropriate age, cruelty to small children and/or animals, and fire starting, which suggest an underlying frustration with lack of control (The Anatomy of Motive, Douglas, J.E., Olshaker, M.). For example, David Berkowitz, the self-proclaimed Son of Sam, set more than two thousand fires throughout New York City before he evolved into a serial killer. Other serial murderers have started their horrible carreers, for instance, and simplified, quite early in their lives as stalkers - also known as "Peeping Toms", escalating into burglary, fetish theft, rape, and eventually murder. By the time the first serious crimes occur, they are generally in their early to mid-twenties. Another typical denominator among future serial killers is low self-esteem and the habit of blaming the rest of the world for their situation. They will already have a criminal record and you may see a dishonorable discharge from the military because there will likely have been problems with any type of authority. The majority also have an abusive or dysfunctional background.
As soon as several offenses, such as fires, stalking, or murder, are linked and attributed by the police to one and the same unknown suspect, it is crucial to look at his early crimes to determine where the suspect might live. In most cases, the offender starts out in his "comfort zone", which means close to where he lives or works, or where he feels emotionally comfortable, for example around his family or friends - that's why it's crucial to start with the early crimes of a suspect. As the self-confidence and obsession with his own "power" grows, so does his activity radius, making an arrest more difficult. Furthermore, in multiple homicides the killer is usually of the same race as his victim. In most cases, there is a triggering trauma leading to the escalation. The two most common precipitating stressors are loss of work or loss of love; but any type of hardship, particularly an economic one, can trigger the violent outburst. The stability that provided a certain pattern of life is suddenly taken away and nothing is holding him back from acting out his fantasies any longer.
Controversial scientific studies (Norris, J., Ph.D.) suggest, from a medical point of view, that serial murderers may share a significant number of common medical/psychological patterns. Those include evidence of soft and hard signs of brain damage resulting from injuries or other physical trauma, severe chemical imbalances brought about by chronic malnutrition and substance abuse, a possible genetic defect, the absence of a sense of self which is the result of often consistently negative parenting, nonparenting, or sexual abuse and an almost hair-trigger violent response to external stimuli with no regard for the physical or social consequences. P. S. Hicks, M.D., Chief Psychiatrist of the California State Prison, San Quentin, California (U.S.A.), is even convinced that organic brain pathology is vastly underdiagnosed in the prison population and plays a much larger role in criminal behavior than previously thought. Furthermore, one of the most significant common psychological behavior patterns in violent offenders seems to be a failure to perceive punishment as a deterrent to their actions and a fascination with police procedures and the officers who are pursuing them. Such factors should be taken into consideration when suspect backgrounds are researched. However, it is important to state that not every individual showing several of the above characteristics will automatically become a criminal. In combination with other factors or evidence, however, they may provide a useful clue.
"No two crimes are exactly alike" and the search for similarities
There are various ways to organize and analyze the facts taken from the available aspects of the crime scene, e.g. the nature of attacks, witness statements, the photographs, forensic evidence such as autopsy protocols and, very important, information related to the victim (victimology).
To be able to assess the behavior of any unknown suspect, it is vital to separate his "modus operandi" from his "signature". The modus operandi is what an offender has to do, in his mind, to accomplish a crime. It is learned behavior and gets modified and perfected as the criminal becomes more skilled at what he does. For example, a fire starter routinely leaves his car running in front of the building in order to escape faster. The signature, on the other hand, is something the offender has to do to fulfill himself emotionally. It is not needed to successfully accomplish the crime, but it is the reason he undertakes the particular crime in the first place. For instance, the fire starter returns to the crime scene as soon as the fire department arrives to watch or to experience sexual pleasure, which is unnecessary to accomplish the crime. The signature is what makes the crime typical and distinguishable and what shows the underlying theme of a case, which is especially useful when an apparent series of crimes needs to be solved and it is not clear whether there are various suspects involved. In the case of only one perpetrator committing a series of very similar crimes, the pattern of the above elements is usually unique enough to determine this: Decades of field experience have shown that it is almost impossible to see two different offenders fitting the same modus operandi and the particular signature while operating in the same area at the same time.
The experience from such investigations is incorporated in a framework basically classifying serious offenders according to whether they are "organized", which implies that for instance murderers plan their crimes ("premeditation"), display control at the scenes of crime, leave few or no clues and mostly target strangers as victims, or "disorganized", which means that the murders are not planned and the crime scenes show evidence of haphazard behavior; or, rarely, a mixture of the two.
Whenever you have any signs of remorse after the crime, like covering the victim up with clothes, meaning that the killer was trying to eliminate the assault or feeling disgust over his actions, there is likely to be a spillover into his post-offense behavior. He may be compelled to talk to someone, to find out what the police are doing regarding the investigation, he may increase his alcohol consumption, alter his physical appearance in some way, or even visit the victim's grave. This gives investigators an excellent chance to go proactive (see above).
General profiling rules, such as, for example, "the older the victim, the younger the offender, starting at 25 and adding or subtracting years based on the degree of sophistication" (The Anatomy of Motive, Douglas, J.E., Olshaker M.) are used as guidelines but need to be adapted to each case, as stated below. No two crimes are exactly alike.
The profiling strategy
The best weapon the police have against an elusive serial murderer's spree is their behavior profile. Douglas, Ressler, Burgess and Hartman divide the FBI's profiling strategy into five stages, with a final sixth stage being the arrest of the correct suspect:
1. Profiling inputs
The first stage involves collecting all information available about the crime, including physical evidence, photographs of the crime scene, autopsy reports and pictures, witness testimony, extensive background information on the victim and police reports. The profiler does not want to be told about possible suspects at this stage because such data might prejudice or prematurely direct his or her profile.
2. Decision process models
In this stage, the profiler organizes the input into meaningful questions and patterns along several dimensions of criminal activity. What type of homicide has been committed (classifications, in short: mass murderers, spree killers and serial murderers, see above)? What is the primary motive for the crime: sexual, financial, personal or emotional disturbance? What level of risk did the victim experience, and what level of risk did the murderer take in killing the victim? What was the sequence of acts before and after the killing, and how long did these acts take to commit? Where was the crime committed? Was the body moved, or was it found where the murder had taken place?
3. Crime assessment
Based on the findings during the previous stages, the profiler now attempts to reconstruct the behavior of the offender and his victim. Was the murder organized (suggesting a killer who carefully selects victims against whom he usually acts out a given fantasy) or disorganized (indicating an impulsive, possible psychotic killer)? Was the crime staged to mislead the police? What motivations were revealed by such details as cause of death, location of wounds, and position of the body? For example, as general profiling rules: (1) brutal facial injuries point to killers who know their victims, (2) murders committed with whatever weapon happens to be available reflect greater impulsivity than murders committed with a gun and may reveal a killer who lives fairly near the victim and (3) murders committed early in the morning seldom involve alcohol or drugs.
4. Criminal profile
Here, profilers formulate an initial description of the most likely suspects. The typical profile includes the perpetrator's race, sex, age (which is one of the toughest points to nail down in a profile because emotional or experiential age does not always match chronological years), marital status, living arrangements and employment history; psychological characteristics, beliefs and values; probable reactions to the police and past criminal record, including the possiblity of similar offenses in the past. This stage also contains a feedback loop whereby profilers check their predictions against stage two-information to make sure that the profile fits the original data.
5. Investigation
A written report is given to the investigators, who concentrate on suspects matching the profile - often, the police have already talked to a likely suspect but did not have reason enough to seriously doubt the suspect's testimony. If new evidence is discovered at this stage, a second feedback process is initiated and the profile will be revised.
6. Apprehension
The arrest of the right suspect is the intended result of the above procedures. The key element then is interview technique - ideally, the subject confesses or at least is willing to talk about his crimes to some extent. A thorough interview of the suspect could furthermore help to assess the influences of background and psychological variables.
Conclusion
You may ask yourself whether there is any evidence about the validity of offender profiling, even though it is now widely recognized as a quite invaluable tool to narrow down the possible suspects in any criminal investigation.
A study in the field of behavioral psychology (Pinizzotto and Finkel, 1990) provides initial data on its effectiveness. Results suggest that profilers can produce more useful and valid criminal profiles than clinical psychologists or even experienced crime investigators. In contrast to this study, it should not be overlooked that this method is fraught with many difficulties and pressures in the real world. However, impressive successes in various cases all over the world, such as the apprehension of Arthur Shawcross and Frank Fuchs, the Austrian bomber, show that this method is at least helping to solve violent and other crimes.
References
Berliner Zeitung, Nummer 20, 24./25. Januar 1998.
INTERPOL, http://www.interpol.int
Douglas, J. E., Olshaker, M.: Mind Hunter, Pocket Books, New York, 1996.
Douglas, Ressler, Burgess and Hartman: Criminal profiling from crime scene analysis, in: Behavioral Sciences and the Law, 4 (1986), p. 401 – 426.
Pinizzotto, A. J., Finkel, N. J.: Criminal personality profiling: An outcome and process study, in: Law and Human Behavior, 14 (1990), p. 215 – 234.
Jackson, J. L., Herbrink, J. C. M., van Koppen, P.: An Empirical Approach to Offender Profiling, in: Advances in Psychology and Law (International Contributions), Redondo, S., Garrido, V., Pérez, J., Barberet, R. (eds.), Walter de Gruyter, Berlin, New York, 1997.
Norris, Joel: Serial Killers, Anchor Books/Doubleday, New York, 1988.
Wrightsman, Nietzel, Fortune: Psychology and the Legal System, Brooks/Cole, 4th Ed., 1997.
Douglas, J. E., Olshaker, M.: The Anatomy of Motive, Scribner, New York, 1999.
By C. B. Meyer, C.B.Meyer@criminalprofiling.ch.
Abstract: Eine Einführung in die Kunst der "Profiler"
Dieser Artikel beschreibt die in den Medien oft unrealistisch gezeigte Arbeit der "Profiler", welche mittels ihrer verhaltenspsychologisch orientierten Analysen möglicher Täter, ihrer Opfer und forensischer Erkenntnisse Persönlichkeitsprofile erstellen, um der Polizei die Suche nach dem oder den Täter(n) zu erleichtern. Unter anderem wird dem Sinn eines Täterprofils nachgegangen und die Methode, aber auch deren manchmal angezweifelte Effektivität beschrieben.
Zur Veranschaulichung werden einige oft verwendete Grundsätze, Prinzipien, typische Tatkonstellationen und Täter-Charakteristika - mit Schwerpunkt Seriengewaltverbrechen - herausgegriffen und dargestellt. Zum Abschluss folgt eine aktuelle Literaturübersicht.
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