Is criminal profiling flawed?

Last year, a searching report by the US National Academy of Sciences challenged all of forensic science to demonstrate its scientific credentials. For profiling, rising to that challenge may take some doing, as even some of its strongest advocates consider it as much an art as a science. Psychologist Brent Snook of the Memorial University of Newfoundland in St John's, Canada, goes as far as to say, "Profiling should be suspended until proper testing of the method provides evidence that it works." There are even mutterings that this is a perfect opportunity to expose criminal profiling for the pseudoscience it really is. Is this the end for the staple of detective dramas, or can profiling prove its worth?

The idea that you can predict the characteristics of an offender from an analysis of his or her behaviour at the crime scene goes at least as far back as Jack the Ripper, a killer who haunted east London in 1888. But profiling in the modern sense probably began in 1956, when police investigating New York City's Mad Bomber consulted psychiatrist James Brussel. He famously predicted that when the man who had terrorised the city for 16 years was apprehended, he would be wearing a buttoned, double-breasted suit. In fact, George Metesky was in his pyjamas when officers arrived at midnight to arrest him. He went off to get dressed and returned in a double-breasted suit, and it was buttoned.

The American model of profiling emerged from this auspicious start. Developed by the FBI, it relies on the judgement of experienced police investigators. First, all the available information about the crime is assimilated. Then the crime is classified as either organised or disorganised, with organised crimes characterised by planning, advanced social skills and control over victims, and disorganised ones tending to be more impulsive and opportunistic.

Profiling now looks more scientific, but is it? Canter's approach has never been properly evaluated, says Snook, a former student of Canter's. And Mark Hilts, who heads the second of three behavioural analysis units at the FBI's National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime in Quantico, Virginia, admits that the FBI has carried out no controlled studies of profiling's efficacy since the centre was established in 1985. The FBI does not publish its profiles, so nobody else has done it for them either. "I'm not really sure how you'd do it, quite honestly," says Hilts.

The main performance measure used by both the FBI and the National Policing Improvement Agency, which is responsible for profiling in the UK, is the level of customer satisfaction in surveys of the law enforcement agencies that use their services. "We get a lot of return customers," says Hilts. But that doesn't necessarily mean profiling is effective. Instead, the profiles might simply be couched in such ambiguous terms that they can be made to fit almost any possible offender.

Will profilers ever have the whole picture? Some law enforcement agencies are beginning to show signs of disillusionment. "I don't think profiling has much of a future," says statistician Chris Devery, who has conducted a review of the literature for the New South Wales police force in Australia. "There's just no evidence that it works."

Others see a future for it, but only if practised very differently. Salfati admits that profiling is "very, very young" in scientific terms, though she is optimistic that it could be an effective investigational tool, if rebuilt on solid scientific foundations. After all, she says, "It's just another name for understanding how people act. By saying that profiling doesn't work, we're essentially saying that psychology doesn't work."


Link:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20727751.500-is-criminal-profiling-flawed-and-disorderly.html