CRIMINAL

PROFILING
DANYAL AHMAD JAMAL
COMSATS, ISLAMABAD
INTRO

• Profiling/Criminal Profiling can be taken as a process of identifying

personality traits, behavioral patterns, motivation for crime, cognitive
tendencies & demographic features of an unknown offender/criminal.
It is considered a skills-based assumption that is part of investigation.
• When police have very little evidence to go on, they will sometimes enlist the
help of a forensic psychologist. The forensic psychologist will use prior
knowledge, psychological concepts and evidence gathered from the scene to build
an offender profile.
• CP is done to create a tentative description/ profile of the criminal by analyzing crime
scene, gather information about the victims, study both police and autopsy reports.
• Criminal Profiling (CP) techniques most famously applied in cases for serial killers.
• Criminal profiling has become important part of FBI as they trained thousands of officers.
• The process is done to answer WHAT? WHY? WHO?
QUALITIES OF CRIMINAL PROFILER

• Key attribute of profiler is judgement.

• Judgment is not always based on facts and figures or evidences alone but with instinct.
• This instinct along with person skills’ & knowledge will help to create a profile without
using much scales and tests.
• In order to access the dynamics of crime, criminal profiler should focus on
understanding victim’s personality too along with criminal.
FAMOUS PROFILE

• “Jack the Ripper” terrorized the East End of London, strangling and slitting the throats of
at least five prostitutes (the exact number is a matter of some controversy). : The women
were attacked and killed on public streets, their bodies were mutilated, and in some cases,
internal organs were removed and taken from the crime scene.
• Dr. Thomas Bond performed autopsies on two of the victims. Here are his speculations
about the physical and psychological characteristics of the ripper based on the
characteristics of the crimes which are:
• “A man of great physical strength.” (He managed to swiftly subdue his victims; none were able to escape or
successfully call out for help.)
• ● “A man of great coolness and daring.” (His savage crimes were committed efficiently and in public spaces
where they could have been witnessed by passersby.)
• ● “The murderer in external appearance is quite likely to be a quiet, inoffensive looking man probably
middle-aged and neatly and respectably dressed.” (He managed to enter and exit the crime scene without
detection, so he apparently blended in and did not call attention to himself.)
• ● “He must be in the habit of wearing a cloak or overcoat.” (It would have been impossible to kill and mutilate
his victims swiftly without getting blood on his hands and clothes, and a large cloak or coat would hide the
blood/internal organs.)
• ● “Solitary and eccentric in his habits, also he is most likely to be a man without regular occupation.” (Someone
capable of such depravity would have difficulty interacting with others without raising suspicion or discomfort.)
• Unfortunately, Jack the Ripper was never caught, so we cannot assess the accuracy of Bond’s pioneering profile.
However, it appears to be the first systematic profile offered to assist police in a criminal investigation by Dr.
Thomas Bond in 1888.
IMPORTANT CRIME SCENE DETAILS FOR
PROFILERS
• Profilers focus on ‘Signature’ aspects of crime (for instance a particular torture or abuse/
left or removed anything on the scene, symbolic patters as writing/use of gasoline for DNA
evidences removal).
• Staging refers to intentional alteration of a crime scene prior to the arrival of police. This is
done to give investigation a wrong direction & save logical suspects. For instance,
converting a murder into suicide. This is usually done by organized offenders.
• Undoing is the process in which offenders try to ‘undo’ the activity. This many involve
washing the crime scene, covering the body on bed with blanket. This is done to avoid the
distress by offender who is usually unorganized.
CHARACTERISTICS OF CRIME SCENE
(ORGANIZED VS DISORGANIZED)
APPROACHES OF CP

• The Top-Down Approach

• The Bottom-Up approach
TOP-DOWN APPROACH

American approach: From the data gathered at the crime scene, the investigators
can identify characteristics of the offender e.g. lifestyle or personality
characteristics. From this the offender is categorized as either an organized or a
disorganized offender. It is a top-down approach because it attempts to fit
crime details under pre-existing categories.
This approach "starts with the big picture and then fills in the details"
• To generate a profile of the offender, the profiler follows 4 step in Top-down approach:

1. Data Assimilation: Review the evidence gathered from the crime scene and other
material evidence
2. Crime scene classification: The crime scene is classified as organized or disorganized
3. Reconstruction of crime: The crime is reconstructed – based on the evidence gathered
hypotheses are made about what has occurred in terms of order of events, behavior of the
offender and of the victim.
4. Profile Generation: These elements are then compared to the overall picture of crime
and a profile is generated.
BOTTOM-UP APPROACH

British approach or investigative psychology.

Starts with small details and creates the big picture. No initial assumptions are made about the offender and
the approach relies heavily on computer databases. It can be the little details that are often overlooked that can be
crucial to the success of a case.
The bottom-up approach is data-driven; the profile is constructed based on the association between particular
characteristics of the offense and of the offender. It started with an individual analysis of individual crimes and a
series of crimes.
A crucial concept of this approach is interpersonal coherence, the way an offender behaves while committing a
crime, e.g. the way they interact with the victim, reflects the way they behave and interact in their everyday life.
A more scientific and data-reliant technique where crime statistics are used to make predictions of likely
suspects.
CHARACTERISTICS OF SERIAL KILLERS IN CP

• No list of characteristics describes every serial killer. research has revealed some recurring patterns.

1. Brain injury that impairs rational thinking

2. Physical, sexual, and/or psychological abuse during childhood.
3. Maladjustment during their childhood sometimes expresses itself in cruelty toward animals
4. Average overall intelligence
5. Not to kill using guns, preferring more intimate methods such as strangulation, stabbing, or even
torturing
6. Desensitize personalities with particular choice of victims
7. interest in violent pornography
TYPES OF SERIAL KILLERS (BY HOMES)

1. Visionary types (Psychotics)

2. Mission oriented (Motivated by goals/ideologies)
3. Hedonistic type (For Pleasure seeking)
4. Power oriented
INTRESTING FACT

Female serial killers tend not to fit this general

pattern. 
they tend to seek out relatively powerless victims (children, the ill, and the elderly), are
more likely to kill members of their own family OR motivated by money (Harrison,
Murphy, Ho, Bowers, & Flaherty, 2015).
OTHER TECHNIQUES OF CRIMINAL PROFILING

Geographical Profiling (criminal spatial mapping)

1. Geographic profiling relies on maps and mathematics. Key locations associated with serial
crimes—particularly crime scenes, but also places where bodies have been dumped or where
witnesses have spotted suspicious activities—are plotted on a detailed computerized map.
2. A geographic profile has direct implications for investigators; it suggests where to place
stakeouts, where to set traps, and where to find potential witnesses who might have seen
something suspicious.
3. Beltway Sniper case, a computer generated geoprofile was constructed based on the sites of the
shootings.
PSYCHOLOGICAL AUTOPSIES

• A psychological autopsy is an effort to dissect and examine the psychological state of a

person prior to his or her death.
• The autopsy-like psychological analysis must rely on less direct sources of evidence.
• Typically, these sources include any records left behind by the deceased (letters, e-mails,
journal entries, cell phone records, audio or video recordings, bank accounts, student or
employee records) as well as data about the person gathered from interviews with friends,
family members, or coworkers who were in contact with the deceased prior to death. The
goal is to reconstruct the dead person’s emotional state, personality, thoughts, and lifestyle
• For example, psychologists would be more likely to conclude that the man who drove off
a cliff had committed suicide if he had been noticeably depressed, if he had made an
effort to “put his affairs in order,” if he had been experiencing serious emotional or
physical pain, if he had severe financial problems, if he had made previous suicide threats
or attempts, if he had made attempts to say goodbye to people close to him, or if he had
expressed a desire to die.
• Predictive policing techniques combine traditional criminal data with unorthodox
information to generate predictions about where crime is likely to happen in the future.
Police computers analyze each crime by time of day, day of the week, and day of the
month. Offense locations are parsed by street address, as well as by proximity to places
such as ATMs, parks, and bars.
VIOLENT CRIMINAL APPREHENSION PROGRAM (VICAP)

• The Violent Criminal Apprehension Program (ViCAP) is a unit of the United States Federal Bureau
of Investigation responsible for the analysis of serial violent and sexual crimes, based in the
Critical Incident Response Group 's (CIRG) National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime
(NCAVC).
• pattern that links serial homicides is what is commonly referred to as "signature". ViCAP
operates under the knowledge that serial homicides are almost always sexually- and
control-driven with a consistent evolving signature present in each murder.
• Summer of 2008, the ViCAP program made its database available to all law enforcement
agencies through a secure internet link. This allows for real time access to the database
and allows agencies to enter and update cases directly into the database
ANY QUESTION?