Offender Profiling: Essential and Effective

Offender Profiling: Essential and Effective or Intrusive

This work will serve as an in-depth view of offender profiling, a technique often used by law enforcement and other security professionals to develop ideas and potential leads about the who, what, when and where of crime. Offender profiling, and particularly what is termed racial profiling has come under extreme fire from many areas of the community, leveling against law enforcement that they apply profiling in a manner that is intrusive and violates personal rights and yet offender profiling is an essential aspect of law enforcement for both prevention of and investigation of crime. This work will discuss both the informal aspects of offender profiling as well as the training aspects of offender profiling and discuss ways in which it is essential to investigative and prevention work in the face of crime and community protection from it.

Offender Profiling: Essential and Effective or Intrusive

Criminal profiling, or offender profiling is indicative of a "new science" in criminology and is also a topic that is highly debated and controversial for its implications associated with individual rights in a free society. Offender profiles are frequently applied as a necessary tool in the development of case work, for both finding and eliciting information from suspects of crime or even potential crime suspects, such as in the case of national security and terrorism. Crime profiles are developed in a general manner and offered to or developed by officers and prosecutors to help them think like a criminal, so as to be better able to identify and/or convict offenders in the community. Criminal profiles are considered highly useful by law enforcement for the prevention of crime or apprehension of those who are suspected of crime. On the flip side of this debate many individuals and especially those who are falsely accused of crime, or detained unnecessarily find offender profiling an intrusive and wholly un-American process that leads to stereotyping and therefore continued disparities in apprehension and conviction of crime, but especially racial disparity. "Racial profiling is currently a volatile topic in cities." (Glenn et al., 2003, p. 213)

In several communities racial profiling has come under extreme public and political debate and in the 21st century many police agencies have taken steps to bring the community together with the police departments to discuss the issue and make attempts to come to terms with the issue of profiling. In the case of Seattle WA a community forum was held and an open discussion was leveled in the community to build a case for police discretion as the object of such actions, that could easily be seen by many as racial profiling.

The department went beyond the norm for opening communication with the community. Police representatives tolerated sometimes very harsh criticism and were in return provided the opportunity to present their perspectives, including a belief that officers needed to be allowed to exercise discretion (versus discrimination) in their contacts with the public. 19 the department followed up this initiative with television public service announcements regarding the discussion that outlined police plans to address community concerns. (Glenn et al., 2003, p. 214)

Several other communities have and are holding similar discussions to attempt to create a better understanding of how offender profiling works and why it is an essential aspect of police work. Formal police training often includes important issues of profiling that go beyond the traditional "seat of the pants" approach that was utilized in the past, i.e. when officers were left on their own to utilize their own view of the community where they serve to help make discretionary decisions about who to stop, who to question and why, based upon their own understanding of the community and its overall offender profile.

Value of Offender Profiling

The value of offender profiling is unquestionable, as the development of an idea regarding the who, what and why aspects of criminal behavior is essential to allowing police officers in the field to seek out and detain those who are "most" likely to be involved in criminal activities that have occurred. Offender profiling is especially important in crimes that leave little evidence and no witnesses but are particularly heinous and damaging to the community. Such as murder, serial stranger attacks like sex crimes or even violent or sex crimes that involve individuals known to the victim. Property violations also have a particular offender profile, and police officers are trained to seek out clues from the physical evidence that help create an idea of who, when and why the property crime occurred. There are a set of sort of blanket offender profiles that can be utilized and added to by officers investigating crime that help them brainstorm possible leads to criminals. For example in situations of murder it is often found that the murder is known to the victim and is often their husband, wife or partner. Different crime modus operandi or MO, also elicit different offender profiles. For example when a school is vandalized detectives often seek out students of the school or former students of the school that have motive for what would seem a senseless crime to most people. Another example being that a majority of murder cases involve offenders well-known to the victim and this is the hopefully short list of people detectives seek to interview and detain and in some cases obtain alibis from, checking off suspects as they go. The detectives also look at the crime itself, looking for not only physical evidence that would identify a suspect but for how the actual crime was committed, was their obvious malice seen in the manner in which the death or assault occurred, i.e. A crime of passion, or was the crime a crime of opportunity, such as when valuables were taken and the individual was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Offender profiling is used in all investigations to some degree or another.

When investigating a crime or developing answers to ongoing patterns, series, or trends, law enforcement personnel often rely upon numerous databases and records management systems. These are used to gain information and insight to prior incidents with similar signatures or modus operandi. Police reports, field interview cards, property pawn transactions, public records, and traffic citations are some common sources of information on known criminals. Ordinary street criminals often have lengthy arrest histories and numerous encounters with law enforcement officers documented on their criminal records. Criminals do not seek to have run-ins with the law, but they do not shy away from them. (Ronczkowski, 2004, p. 72)

Criminal profiles serve as a starting place for the development of answers to cases where the evidence does not initially create a positive identification of the offender. They guide enforcement, prevention, apprehension and even successful prosecution of criminals. They are one of the basic starting points for how officers rebuild events that have occurred after they have occurred, and sometimes even long after they have occurred.

The Special Case of Terrorism

One area of specific concern with regard to public interest in racial or offender profiling are crimes where the commission of them seems random (i.e. not directed at individuals but at institutions), is well planned and the identity of the assailants are concealed. Terrorism is this type of crime, as many offenders have limited or no involvement with law enforcement prior to their first alarming offence and therefore the only real way to fight such acts is through deterrence, which sometimes results in detention of people simply based on observed actions and/or words, rather than long lists of intelligence building systems, such as prior arrest records or petty crime leading to the events.

Terrorists, on the other hand, go to great extremes to avoid detection. As noted in the profiles of the September 11, 2001 hijackers, other than a traffic infraction they had little if any contact with the law enforcement community. Therefore, gathering information on these individuals requires analysts to think outside the box and to identify nontraditional sources of information. One example of these sources would be purchases that perhaps an ordinary person would not make, especially if in bulk. Other sources would be the Internet, published material, court records, handouts, radio (including citizen band and ham radios), and self-published books such as the Turner Diaries and Hunter by Andrew MacDonald. (Ronczkowski, 2004, p. 72)

Terrorism, and the prevention of it has challenged the law enforcement communities in many extreme ways and has created a need for a whole new varied set of standards and techniques, which often utilizes observations of actions, through record keeping and simple surveillance, based on intelligence gathering as well as simple observation in areas where terrorism might occur, such as airports, cargo hold areas, mass transit and so forth. Civil rights advocates argue that watching people, go about their daily lives, often no matter how suspicious their behavior is a violation of their rights as is their detention without due cause, yet these things occur and can often be based on simple observation of appearance, such as name, race or even religious affiliation with or without suspicious behaviors to back such issues up. (Harris, 2002, p. 8)

Terrorist acts are both crimes and forms of warfare, and in both respects are unlike what we are used to." 2 Understanding the larger possibilities, such as warfare, law enforcement will be able to make informed decisions on matters concerning data collection. When gathering information it is important to document and standardize every step of the process. This will alleviate any complications when categorizing behaviors or activities and will ensure that all participants in the process are on the same playing field. (Ronczkowski, 2004, p. 72)

Following the 9/11 attacks on the U.S. which is an example of foreign terrorism, though domestic terrorism has been present in the U.S. For decades, many individuals accepted new standards of security that might infringe upon their rights as citizens to freely travel, assemble and speak, yet more recent protests have been leveled against law enforcement and security measures as time has passed, and the memory of atrocities has faded and people have become increasingly aware that knee jerk legal passages have become increasingly intrusive into their lives and the lives of others and the community at large and law enforcement are seeking to develop a balance that allows security officials to utilize offender profiling while still protecting civil liberties of every day law abiding citizens. (Peabody, 2002, p. 90)

Some Examples of Effective Use of Offender Profiling

Offender Profiling Rapists

As the old saying goes, some crimes are especially heinous, and sex crimes such as rape are a significant example and a significant social issue that almost everyone would like to see controlled and eradicated from society. Not very many people would argue for the enforcement of civil liberties for rape offenders as such would be contrary to the safety and protection of the whole of the world population. This next section details the manner in which offender profiling is used to profile rapists, both serial and single offenders.

Profiling rape offenders is a technique or group of techniques utilized by law enforcement and investigators to detail the motivations and possible future actions of the rapist. The technique is used to make a profile which could help predict future actions of the rapist, based on the type of victim, location of event, known appearance of the offender as well as his technique and/or communications he had with the victim(s). These bits of information, collectively create a picture of motive and potential next actions so law enforcement can ideally seek out prevention and apprehension mechanisms, though it also utilized to link rape events to a single rapist, often called a serial rapist and is utilized in much the same manner as the profile of murderers. The profiling of rapists can also be seen as one of the most frequently studied psychological subjects, as the law enforcement an dcorrections communites have also attempted to develop a partnership for training profiles with psychological data involving known offenders or those who are considered at risk for offending in sexual and power crimes such as rape and the molestation of children.

There are also data, however, that would suggest that some of what is consid- ered a lack of sensitivity in measurement is actually a reflection of the hetero- geneity in the offender population. Data from other sources (Knight & Prentky, 1990) suggest that there are a variety of typologies of child molesters and that not all may have sexual arousal as a primary motivator. Barbaree and Marshall (1989) provide profile analysis of arousal measures collected in their laboratory and found five profile types with only approximately 35% being what would be considered a typical child molester profile: that is, maximum responding to children with least responding to other stimuli. The rest of the extrafamilial child molesters were fairly evenly divided between normal profile types, non- discriminating profile types, a child-adult type (where arousal is equivalent) and a teen-adult profile (again where arousal is equivalent). Also, it should be noted that Freund and Watson (1991) found better sensitivity among subjects with male victims, and those with more than one victim, and the previously cited study by Miner et al. (1995) suggested that the offenders against males show the most dis- tinctive offense-specific profile. This literature would be consistent with literature related to reoffense in that those with more than one offense and those with male victims tend to have the highest reoffense rates.

(Hollin, 2001, p. 101)

One of the foremost experts on rape and its motivations is that of Groth who wrote one of the first and oft utilized works on the subject of rapists, rapist profiles and motivations based on those elements of the crime. The goal of Groth's work Men Who Rape: The Psychology of the Offender was to create a better profile of the rapist, based on the various attributes noted above to make rape offenders less elusive to law enforcement. (Groth, 1979, p. 1) in so doing Groth studies patterns of various types of rape and gives the reader the details of the study in his book. In this work Groth outline three types of rape, anger rape, power rape and sadistic rape. In the case of anger rape the assailant expresses his anger through the act. In the case of power rape the act of dominating the victim is the motivating factor and in the case of sadistic rape the act of physically and psychologically hurting the victim is the motivation. According to Groth, though motivation can be divergent there is a general pattern that can be seen through analyzing the events of a rape, in the case of anger rape the offender uses the rape to release anger, and often does sever physical harm to the victim, in fact more than is needed to actually elicit the act of penetration. (Groth, 1979, p. 13) in power rape the individual does not necessarily with to harm the victim but rather possess them sexually, to express his own feelings of inferiority by utilizing rape to compensate psychologically redeeming himself by expressing mastery, strength, control, authority, identity and capability through the act of rape. (Groth, 1979, p. 25) the third type or pattern of rape as Groth explains includes a culmination of aggression as an expression of sadism, or the desire to inflict pain both physically and psychologically upon the victim in an eroticized state. "There is a sexual transformation of anger and power so that aggression itself becomes eroticized. This offender finds the intentional maltreatment of his victim intensely gratifying and takes pleasure in her torment, anguish, distress, helplessness, and suffering." (Groth, 1979, p. 44)

Offender Profiling Utilizing Physical MO

The physical evidence of unnatural deaths is frequently some of the most important bits of information for investigation, arrest and potentially prosecution of murder, or the designation as death by accident or suicide. Death by asphyxiation can occur in several forms, including smothering, manual strangulation, ligature strangulation, hanging and autoerotic death and each points to a certain type of offender and/or crime. Though gunshots, stabbing, and other forms of murder or suicide are apparent in most cases death by asphyxiation can occur in various ways and can lead to varied profiles of offenders or the development of an idea that wounds were self inflicted. One last note on offender profile with regard to weapon type and use, includes the fact that the angle of entry, distance of the weapon from the victim and many other clues help investigators determine the nature of the crime, where one was committed. Each different form has differing physical evidence and different implications for investigation and prosecution as well as clues for investigators regarding an offender profile. In the case of manual strangulation there will be petichial hemorage, of the blood vessels in the eyes, as well as bruising, possibly in the shape of the hands around the neck, and the injury will determine offender profile information, including if it was planned (premeditated), or occurred as a result of rage or opportunity. In the case of suffocation the person's fluids may be present on the object utilized to suffocate the individual and the individual may actually breath in some of the objects trace substance, and this type of death generally points to a crime of opportunity as well as an offender who is capable of physically holding down a victim for the extended period of time it takes to kill an individual by suffocation. In the case of ligature strangulation petichial hemorrhage will also be seen but in addition ligature marks, made by the pattern of the ligature device will be seen. This type of murder elicits a profile again of someone who is physically strong enough to subdue the victim and the type and proximity of the weapon will help determine opportunity or premeditation.

For example in the case of say a robbery or rape gone bad and leading to murder the victim may be strangled with an article of their own clothing or a power cord from an item found very close to the victim, while a strangulation that occurs using a hand made device that was brought to the scene by the offender would suggest that the crime was planned and premeditated to culminate into murder. Additionally in both forms of strangulation there may be specific patterns of bone breaking and/or bruising around the neck, as it takes considerable force to strangle an individual and will also likely result in defensive injuries to that individual and possibly to the offender. Hanging will often cause similar physical evidence but will additionally frequently break the neck completely as the weight of one's body will cause asphyxiation and breaking of neck and spinal bones and again can occur at ones own hand or as a result of intentional murder.

Autoerotic death can occur, accidentally when individuals engage in sexual eroticism that involved partial asphyxiation it said to intensify the sexual experience. In this case the need for crime scene investigation is crucial as the individual may be found in a particular state of undress and in a compromised physical state, but depending on the method utilized to initially perform partial asphyxiation may also show additional physical evidence that simulates any of the other forms of death by asphyxiation, but may have occurred at their own hand or completely by accident with a partner. (Causes of Death Strangulation and Suffocation Hidden Evidence Chapter 6 (http://www.uvm.edu/~biology/Classes/096AB/8_Strangulation.pdf)

Robbery / Forced Entry Profiles

Coercion, is used by criminals for various reasons, potentially to allow the presence of the victim so he or she may be coerced into guiding the thief to valuables. The criminal coerces the occupant into letting them into the home under some guise, such as that of a repairman or a needy motorist who needs the telephone. The criminal then tells the occupant of his or her plans only after they are safely inside, reducing the risk of detection from outside the home. In the use of physical force to gain entry the criminal may attempt coercion and for whatever reason it fails and then they simply force their way into the home through the door, often times placing one foot in the door opening to keep the way open. Criminals who utilize such methods are very bold and taking particular risk as the presence of the individual could end in serious physical violence. Criminal profiles of individuals who use such tactics to steal, rape, otherwise assault or murder individuals are particularly important but also troubling, as disguises and an overall persuasive nature can lead to a description of the individual that is to basic to identify a suspect, after the fact. These offenders are also particularly dangerous because unlike the standard burglar they are willing and able to enter a home or business while victims are present, therefore increasing the risk of detection and resistance. They will often prey on the elderly or people known to be alone and relatively defenseless. (Wisher, 2001, p. 30)

The utilization of breaking an entering, often when the occupant is not present allows the individual free run of the home to seek out and find whatever he or she is looking for. This is more likely to occur at night or during the day when the criminal knows the occupants are not present, to reduce chance of early detection and/or the need to use physical violence to either find valuables or subdue the victim to reduce detection. This can also occur when the criminal finds an unlocked door or window to enter, especially common in warmer months when people are more likely to leave doors or windows open and unlocked. Breaking an entering, through a window when occupant is not present or at night while victims are asleep is commonly used, as the breaking of glass is relatively simple, especially if the glass is adjacent to a door or window lock that will allow easier access to the home. Door locks are also frequently broken, doorknob locks are the most common forced locks as the door mechanism is not as strong and usually only extends into the depth of the trim of the door, which is not as solid as the door jam, such as the extension of a deadbolt. Door locks can also be slipped or picked using tools, a common one is the use of a credit card or something like it to slip the lock open. It is crucial to understand these various forms and their use as it adds to the information that needs to be gained by the investigator to seek out criminals as they will frequently utilize the same methods over and over, as well as to profile the criminal, to see if his or her crime is serial or singular and discover the level of desperation in the act of burglary. (Evans, Fyfe, & Herbert, 1992, p. 55) it is also important to note than many of these types of crimes, are crimes of desperation and are committed by people with desperate lives, such as those who are displaced and/or victims of substance abuse. Crimes against property can also escalate into assault and murder and may occur when an offender is to "high" fully understand the implications of the crime. (Califano, 1998, p. 9)