Approaches in Criminal Profiling : An Introduction

The Criminal or offender profiling as it is now often called, is not a new concept in the fight against crime. Profiling has been around from the Middle Ages with the publication of the book Malleus Maleficarum in 1486, a diatribe, supposedly approved by the Roman Catholic Church, which set out methods to identify and eradicate witches. But the concept is constantly evolving and moving in different directions and adopting separate approaches.

So, what exactly is criminal profiling? Simply speaking, profiling can be described as the identification of specific attributes of an offender committing a particular crime by a thorough and systematic observational process assisted by an analysis of the crime scene, the victim, the forensic evidence, and the known facts of the crime.

In the area of science three types of professionals can be engaged in the investigation of criminal behavior; behavioral scientists, social scientists, and forensic scientists. But profiling is not exclusively a science; nor is it an art. Hence the dilemma.

In fact, there is still confusion as to the meaning and use of the term “profile”. Various agencies use the term to describe different activities. Furthermore, the image of the profiler, as created by popular media such as the motion picture Hannibal and television series Criminal Minds has so compounded the problem, that this media image has begun to influence some academics about what profiling actually consists of.

To add to this confusion there are even different types of profiling and different approaches to profiling. This book will endeavor to demystify the various terms for you.

Criminal profiling has been referred to, among other less common terms, as behavioral profiling, crimes scene profiling, offender profiling, psychological profiling and criminal investigative analysis (Palermo and Kocsis, 2005).

Some of these terms are interchangeable and some are not. For example, Kocsis, Cooksey, and Irwin (2004), provide their interpretation of criminal psychological profiling. They describe it as a technique used during an investigation whereby crime behaviors are analyzed for identifying possible distinct offender characteristics.

Furthermore there are other types of profiling which are not akin to offender profiling or psychological profiling such as geographical profiling. In the coming chapters we will define the subtle differences in each term with a view to providing the reader with a good overall understanding of the terms involved.

From the early 1950s profiling was predominantly carried out by psychiatrists, psychologists and other mental health professionals. The approach they adopted is called diagnostic evaluation or sometimes the clinical approach.

David Elio Malocco was born in Dundalk, County Louth, Ireland. His father was born in Casalattico in Frosinone in Italy and his mother was born in Monaghan in Ireland. He was educated at the Christian Brothers School in Dundalk and his parents later sent him to St. Patrick's College in Cavan where they hoped he would be ordained as a Roman Catholic priest. But he chose law and business instead. He received his Bachelor of Civil Law degree from University College Dublin and spent fifteen years as a criminal lawyer before taking a second degree at the Open University, Milton Keynes in England where he obtained a first class honors degree in Psychology majoring in Cognitive Development. In 1991 he realized a personal ambition and moved to New York where he studied film direction, production and writing for film at New York University. Since then he has written numerous screenplays in several genre and has written, produced and directed several shorts and three feature films, Virgin Cowboys, Magdalen and Jack Gambel: The Enigma. He later studied creative writing at Oxford University and since then has completed a Higher Certificate in Psychotherapy; a Professional Certificate in Stockbroking from the Institute of Banking and is currently completing a Masters in Financial Services from University College Dublin.. He is a graduate member of the British Psychological Society; and a member of the Association of Professional Counsellors and Psychotherapists; the American Criminology Society; and, the Institute of Banking. He has written several books on true crime and forensic science. The books were motivated by dual diplomas he had taken. The first was in the Psychology of Criminal Profiling and the second in Forensic Science specializing in crime scene analysis. But his repertoire of writing also includes comedy, cooking, conspiracy theories and health books. David is a lifelong supporter of Liverpool Football Club and enjoys filmmaking, writing, drinking wine, cooking and rescuing abandoned and abused dogs. You can email him on davidmalocco@gmail.com