3.9 TYPOLOGIES AND PROFILING OF THE OFFENDER

One of the professional challenges to police investigations of crime scenes is to create a nexus between one crime and others that appear similar for many reasons. Creating the link helps the investigator recognize similarities, focus on modus operandi, and identify common evidence left behind at multiple crime scenes (including possible “signatures” associated with violent crimes left at the scene by the criminal). When an investigator creates comparisons between crimes that appear to be clearly connected, a profile of the offender may emerge.

Law enforcement officers, prosecutors, and criminologists in the United States who work on identifying characteristics of offenders prefer the typological system of comparison. The typological system has its roots in the expertise of law enforcement. It requires communication between investigators, agencies, and others locally, regionally, and beyond, and it is based primarily on a combination of qualitative data and experience. There are differences in perspectives from different parts of the world. In the United Kingdom, for example, a geographical system originating in psychological expertise is preferred. The geographical system is based on empirical and quantitative information and focuses on statistical methods informing investigators of offender characteristics, thereby allowing police to create the offender profile.

Criminological Investigation Today

A national Bureau of Investigation, which was the precursor to today’s FBI, was formed on July 26, 1908, in response to the increased growth of cities and the commensurate expansion of criminal activities taking place in the US. (Fox, 2003). Up to this point, a systematic way of enforcing the law across the country did not exist. Small police forces in local communities existed but, for the most part, were poorly trained and equipped by today’s standards. Many received their positions of public trust through a political appointment. Recruitment and retention was a significant issue due to poor wages, long and arduous work schedules, no visible way of uniformly informing people of the officer’s legal authority, and no prescriptive initial and ongoing training program.

Petty crime in those days could easily occupy an entire community police force. The advances in technology and mechanization created additional opportunities for lawbreakers to prey on communities. Just because the automobile industry was in its infancy did not mean that cars could not be stolen from their proper owners and used for criminal activities. As the country was on the cusp of its entry into the first major world war, Americans now had to address how they would protect their national security from threats of sabotage, international espionage, and domestic subversion. Finally, the threat of anarchism was real. A revolutionary call to overthrow capitalism and bring power to the common man, anarchism took things a step further by advocating the overthrow of the government entirely and returning governance to the common man. The people advocating this point of view in the early 1900s were the first modern-day terrorists. Through the early efforts of a number of self-styled “special agents” and the leadership of notables such as J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI flourished.

Using the most advanced techniques known at the time, the FBI in the late 1970s created a typological profiling strategy that was endorsed by many in the criminological community (Sammons, n.d.). The strategy was created after interviewing 36 convicted serial killers and rapists. The FBI then added information gleaned from previous investigations and solved crimes to the knowledge gained from the interviews. The cornerstone of the FBI approach is the classification of crime scenes (and hence, offenders) as either organized or disorganized. FBI profiling is a six-stage process:

1) Identify and analyze investigations data, also called profiling inputs. This preliminary step merges all relevant case information, including detailed reports, crime scene photographs, description of the neighborhood, the medical examiner’s report, a timeline of the victim’s movements, actions, and contacts immediately before death, and the offender’s detailed profile.

2) Construct a decision process model. The investigator lists the basic characteristics of the homicide, including all pertinent details. A comparison of where the victim was found in relation to where the murder may have occurred is announced.

3) Conduct a crime assessment. This is the most complex and detailed process. It is here that the investigator tries to establish whether the crime scene demonstrates characteristics of an organized offender, that of a disorganized offender, or a combination of the two. This classification process is considered central to how the FBI approaches criminal profiling.

The determination that a crime scene is organized or disorganized is based on evidence of planning on the offender’s part. A disorganized crime scene suggests unplanned, chaotic behavior, whereas an organized one suggests control and forethought. The profile eventually constructed will often go beyond the typical characteristics of organized/disorganized offenders and include information extrapolated from the crime scene about the offender’s physical characteristics, employment/skill set, sexual history, age and ethnic group (which are usually similar to the victim’s). (Sammons, n.d., p. 1)

It is through the use of this approach, along with other available investigative information, that the King County Sheriff’s Office and their partners were able to apprehend and convict Gary Ridgeway, the Green River Killer, to whom at least 48 murders were attributed.

4) Release the criminal profile to local investigators. In this stage, the profiler produces a report that attempts to accurately predict the personality type and the physical and social characteristics of the yet-unknown offender, and to provide any outlier observations. Does the offender “stage” certain objects relative to the victim or collect “trophies” from the crime scene? Does it appear that the killer has an obsession with pornography? Does the offender attempt to communicate with investigators through the media?

5) Local police agencies conduct an investigation using the FBI-developed criminal profile. The so-called “boots on the ground” may be able to readily compare the local knowledge base of offenders to the profile and immediately develop a suspect. At minimum, the enriched investigative material helps patrol officers and detectives watch for persons who fit the rendered profile.

6) Apprehension of a criminal who demonstrates tendencies seen in the criminal profile. This is the culminating step in the FBI profiling process. This stage reflects the accuracy of the profile developed. After apprehension, local police and FBI interviews and interrogations will facilitate additional details to be fact-checked. Such information can be harvested and imputed into the profiling system database, and doing so improves the profiling accuracy for future investigations.