An Empirical Assessment of Content in Criminal Psychological Profiles

Transcription

1 An Empirical Assessment of Content in Criminal Psychological Profiles Richard N. Kocsis Abstract: Although criminal psychological profiling has been in use by law enforcement agencies for almost three decades, there is a paucity of empirical research examining the technique. A fundamental issue that has received little attention is the empirical evaluation of information contained in profiles composed by professional profilers. In this study, a group of profilers, police officers, psychologists, college students, and self-declared psychics were given information from a solved murder investigation, after which the participants composed a written profile predicting the probable offender. Professional profilers tended to write more lengthy profiles that contained more information about the nonphysical attributes of the offender and more information about the crime scene or the offender s behavior before, during, and after the crime. These results are discussed in terms of their implication for our broader understanding of the technique of profiling and future directions for research into profiling. Keywords: factual content; criminal psychological profiling Psychological profiling is the process of integrating information gleaned from the investigation of a crime into a description of the likely offender. Profiles are often constructed and used as one of several aides to a criminal investigation. Despite the proliferation and apparent acceptance of criminal psychological profiling by law enforcement bodies throughout the world, there is little empirical research investigating the issues surrounding the technique, such as what information should be contained in a profile, how detectives make sense of a profile, or how valid profiles are. The study reported here attempts to both extend and replicate research published by Pinizzotto and Finkel (1990) on the content of psychological profiles written by professional profilers and how profilers differ from other people, if at all, with respect to the types of information included in their profiles. THE STATE OF RESEARCH ON PSYCHOLOGICAL PROFILING The earliest evidence used to justify profiling stemmed not from any empirical research but from anecdotal accounts of its successes by those engaged as NOTE: All correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Dr. R. Kocsis, 16 Lynden Avenue, Carlingford, Sydney, NSW, Australia; richard_kocsis@hotmail.com. International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology, 47(1), DOI: / X Sage Publications 37

2 38 International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology profilers themselves (Britton, 1998; Douglas & Oleshaker, 1995; Ressler & Shachtman, 1992). That is, profilers reported that their profiles were useful and helpful to investigations. Understandably, such accounts attracted strong criticism regarding their objectivity and therefore their reliability (Canter, 1994; Crace, 1995). Another attempt at improving our appreciation of profiling as an important investigative tool came from various viability- and consumer satisfaction type studies that surveyed police agencies that had used or wanted profiling services in their investigations (Beck, O Sullivan, & Ogilvie, 1989; Copson, 1995; Jackson, Van Koppen, & Herbrink, 1993). These studies yielded the somewhat obvious conclusion that akin to most other forensic investigative aids, police officers and agencies generally appreciated or desired the input of profiling services (Geberth, 1996). Unfortunately, such results have been erroneously interpreted as providing evidence for the predictive accuracy and thus validity of profiling (West, 2001) rather than simply as a reflection of police investigators satisfaction with or desire for such a service. More recently, a number of quasi-experimental studies examined the accuracy of expert profilers in comparison with other groups via a test questionnaire based on a previously solved murder case (Kocsis, Hayes, & Irwin, 2002; Kocsis, Irwin, Hayes, & Nunn, 2000). Profilers were found to provide profiles that were more accurate than those produced by several other groups. Although these studies provided previously unavailable empirical data on profiling accuracy, they examined the technique within an artificial context of a multiple-choice questionnaire profilers filled out about the offender rather than by examining the content of the profiles actually written. Thus, these studies imposed various recognition and response parameters that are not typically encountered in the actual investigative application of the profiling technique. Furthermore, these studies did not yield insights into the constructive processes or content of criminal psychological profiles. In their promotion of criminal psychological profiling, a number of authors have generated extensive lists of items that are prescribed as typically being contained within a professionally constructed profile (Holmes & Holmes, 1996; Vorpagel, 1982). Professional profilers expertise and insight is said to be the conduit through which information, beyond the scope and perception of the typical person, is provided. However, any empirical examination of the written composition of criminal profiles, as prepared by expert profilers in comparison with other professionals, has been the subject of little scrutiny. Indeed, in comparison with other disciplines such as clinical psychology that devote substantial effort to the systematic and professional construction of assessment reports (e.g., Zuckerman, 1995), the practice of profiling is not so systematic in articulating what information should be (or tends to be) contained in a crime assessment report. Possibly the only previous study to undertake any examination of the written composition of criminal psychological profiles was by Pinizzotto and Finkel (1990). Small samples (six participants in each group) of trained profilers, police detectives, psychologists, and university students were asked to examine a homi-

3 Content in Psychological Profiles 39 cide and rape case and then write a profile of the probable offender for each crime. They found that the profilers wrote far more extensive reports than did any of the other sampled groups. In particular, the profiles written by the profilers contained far more items of information or predictions about the probable offender. So despite criminal psychological profiling being available to law enforcement bodies for some three decades (Wilson, Lincoln, & Kocsis, 1997), the only empirical information available regarding the composition of criminal profiles suggests that when composed by profilers, they tend to be longer and contain more predictions. There is no empirical research that tells us more specifically how profilers excel, and there has never even been an attempt to replicate, conceptually or otherwise, Pinizzotto and Finkel s (1990) basic findings. Indeed, simple replication of Pinizzotto and Finkel s research is clearly warranted given the small samples used in all of their studied groups. Given the ever-increasing use of this forensic technique by law enforcement agencies throughout the world (Ainsworth, 2001), a better understanding of the constituent elements of this forensic technique is needed. The objective of this study was to first provide a replication of the results initially reported by Pinizzotto and Finkel. Second, this study sought to further expand on their findings by examining more specifically how profilers differ from others in their assessments and predictions of perpetrators of violent crime. This was accomplished by examining three different categories of information contained in a profile as well as by comparing the performance to several groups that have been studied in previous research on profile accuracy. METHOD This study presents a content analysis of profiles written by professional profilers, psychics, psychologists, college students, and police officers after having been provided with detailed information about a real murder committed in rural New South Wales, Australia. The methodology is described in considerable detail in a previously published article on profile accuracy (Kocsis et al., 2000), and so we only briefly describe aspects of the method in this article critical to the understanding of the procedure. PARTICIPANTS AND PROCEDURE Five groups of participants included five professional profilers, 29 psychologists working on graduate degrees at an Australian university, 34 police officers recruited at various police jurisdictions throughout Australia, 19 self-declared psychics recruited through advertisements in the yellow pages of a local phone directory and by contacting a psychic society also listed in the directory, and 27 students majoring in biology at an Australian university. All participants were given a detailed portfolio of information about a real but solved murder investigation. The portfolio included several photographs of the victim s deceased body

4 40 International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology and the scene of the crime, a sketch of and verbal description of the crime scene, an autopsy report describing the body and the likely cause of death, a report from an entomologist who analyzed insects and other life forms found in and around the body, and a ballistics report. The participants were asked to examine these materials carefully and were then given a sheet of paper on which they were to describe in as much detail as they could the person who they thought committed the crime. No time constraints were placed on the completion of the profile. CONTENT ANALYSIS OF THE PROFILES These profiles were examined and coded with respect to the following dimensions: (a) physical aspects of the offender, (b) nonphysical aspects of the offender, and (c) aspects of the crime and/or the offender s behavior before, during, or after the crime. Included in the appendix are details of the specific specific features of the profiles that were coded in each dimension. The individual features of the profiles listed in the appendix were coded by a person blind to the author of the profile, and a random sample of 25% of the profiles was coded by a second person to assess the consistency and accuracy of the first coder s use of the coding scheme. Agreement ranged between 0.85 and 1.00, giving us confidence that the coder was using the scheme as intended. Each profile was then given the following four scores: (a) total number of physical features of the offender described (with possible values between 0 and 8), (b) total number of nonphysical features of the offender described (with possible values between 0 and 17), (c) total number of aspects of the crime or the criminals behavior (with possible values between 0 and 15), and (d) total number of features described, defined simply by the sum of these three scores. A count was undertaken of the total number of words in each profile by transcribing the profiles into a word-processing program and using the program s word count feature. RESULTS Table 1 displays the mean number of words and features in the profiles by group. Analysis of these differences was undertaken using a Poisson regression model (see, e.g., Gardner, Mulvey, & Shaw, 1995) rather than the more traditional analysis of variance for a number of reasons. First, Poisson regression is more appropriate when the response variable is a count (e.g., number of times something occurs) because count data, especially when the mean is small, do not follow a normal distribution, partially because of the constraint that a count cannot be less than zero. Second, analysis of variance presumes group equality of variance, whereas with count data, the variability of the counts tends to be correlated with the mean. As can be seen in Table 1, there is clearly a positive relationship between the mean and the variability of the frequencies. Third, analysis of variance and pairwise comparisons can be invalid when both sample sizes and vari-

5 TABLE 1 MEAN NUMBER OF FEATURES DESCRIBED IN PROFILES AND TOTAL PROFILE LENGTH (standard deviations in parentheses) Police Science Poisson Profilers Psychics Psychologists Officers Students Regression, (n = 5) (n = 19) (n = 29) (n = 34) (n = 27) χ 2 (4) Total number of words a b b c d 1, (152.56) (112.60) (54.10) (52.89) (67.06) p <.001 Total number of features listed c 9.11 b 8.55 b 7.53 a, b 6.26 a (5.63) (3.60) (3.10) (3.40) (2.21) p <.001 Physical features of offender 4.00 a 4.47 a 3.03 a 3.68 a 3.44 a (1.00) (1.81) (1.21) (1.55) (1.45) p =.140 Nonphysical features of offender 7.60 c 2.47 b 2.21 b 2.09 b 0.96 a (3.51) (1.87) (1.76) (2.05) (1.22) p <.001 Crime scene and/or behavior features 5.20 c 2.16 a, b 3.31 a, c 1.76 b 1.85 b (2.28) (1.74) (1.94) (1.61) (1.59) p <.001 NOTE: Within a row, means with different superscripts differ significantly at p <.05 after a Bonferroni correction. 41

6 42 International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology ability are unequal, especially when the smaller group has the larger variance (see, e.g., Boneau, 1960; Murphy, 1976). The groups varied considerably in size as well as in variance, and the smaller group always had a larger variance. Just as in an ordinary least squares regression model, in a Poisson regression model, the frequency (in the case, e.g., the number of features in the profile) is modeled as a function of a set of predictors. In the case, the predictors are a set of four dummy variables coding group membership (see, e.g., Darlington, 1990). The null hypothesis that the mean is the same in all groups is tested by comparing a fit measure (χ 2 ) of a model that includes only a regression constant with the same fit measure from a model containing both the constant and the four dummy variables. The difference between these χ 2 statistics follows a χ 2 distribution if the null hypothesis is true. As can be seen in Table 1, the five groups differed significantly in the total number of words in the profiles, the total number of features listed, the number of nonphysical descriptors of the offender listed, and the number of crime and/or behavioral features listed. They did not differ, however, in the number of physical features listed. All possible pairwise comparisons were conducted by rerunning the analysis, changing the reference group in each analysis. To control for multiple tests, a Bonferroni/Holm (Darlington, 1990; Holm, 1979) correction was applied to the resulting p values. The results of these pairwise comparisons are provided in Table 1. The most generally consistent result was the tendency for profilers to write longer profiles that contained more information about the nonphysical descriptive features of the offender as well as about the crime or the behavior of the offender before, during, or after the murder. On this latter measure, however, the profilers did not differ from the psychologists. Consistent with the omnibus test, all groups provided an equal number of physical descriptors of the offender. DISCUSSION Consistent with Pinizzotto and Finkel (1990), professional profilers wrote more lengthy profiles than did any of the other groups examined. In addition, these longer profiles contained more predictions about the offender. Beyond this replication of Pinizzotto and Finkel, a number of other interesting findings emerged. No significant differences were found between the groups in the amount of information their profiles provided concerning the physical features of the unknown offender. In the provision of nonphysical items of information, however, profilers surpassed all of the groups. Similarly, in the generation of crime scene and/or behavior information, the profiles composed by the professional profilers surpassed all of the other groups with the exception of the psychologists. A number of important implications emerge from these results that highlight the disciplinary origins and boundaries of profiling. The fact that no differences emerged between any of the groups concerning the amount of information related to physical features of the offender suggests that the scope of the sampled profes-

7 Content in Psychological Profiles 43 sional profilers expertise is unlikely to specifically reside in any exceptional capacity to articulate physical characteristics of a potential offender. There seem to be two plausible explanations why. The first pertains to the comparatively finite nature of such items of information. Whereas the options for describing the historical background or antecedent criminal behaviors of an individual are somewhat diverse, a description of an offender s physical characteristics is generally confined to a somewhat basic set of parameters such as age, gender, race, and so forth. Second, the generation of physical characteristics can be conceived as something within the general corpus of knowledge available to most individuals. Thus, whereas the other elements of profile content may be regarded as specialized knowledge, there only exist a certain number of physical features available for description, and these are readily apparent to most individuals. However, professional profilers exceeded the other groups in the generation of information pertaining to nonphysical aspects of an offender. This may be because one component of professional profilers expertise is familiarity with the research literature on the various offender taxonomies and classifications inherent to profiling practice. Inherent to most of these studies is material discussing aspects of etiology and history of the offender (e.g., Ressler, Douglas, & Burgess, 1988). So, professional profilers expertise and the nature and amount of information contained in their profiles may be the result of their familiarity with the relevant literature related to the crime being examined. Possibly the most interesting finding of the study involves the nomination of crime scene and/or behavioral items of information. Here, the professional profilers surpassed all of the groups with the exception of the psychologists. The psychologists also outperformed the police detectives and the university students. This result suggests that the skills and expertise of professional profilers and psychologists may be very similar. This is particularly interesting given that psychologists, as far as we are aware, did not have any special knowledge or expertise in criminal behavior per se. Copson (1995) and Jackson et al. (1993) found that one of the most valued features police derived from profiles was not so much the tangible assistance they provide in identifying the offender but rather the insights and understanding of the unknown offender they offered. This observation seems to be consistent with our results. Profiles written by profilers are not particularly insightful beyond what anyone off the street could probably provide with respect to the physical features of the offender. They do, however, contain more information about the nonphysical features as well as behavioral information such as that identified by Copson (1995) and Jackson et al. (1993). One limitation and concern of this study, echoing those of Pinizzotto and Finkel (1990), was the small sample of expert profilers available or willing to participate in this research. As noted by Kocsis et al. (2000), the professional rivalries among profilers may act as an impediment to such individuals participating in research that seeks to quantitatively examine their capabilities. Such an attitude hinders the scientific development of profiling and serves to impede the

8 44 International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology professional recognition of the technique in the wider legal and psychological community. Finally, we should acknowledge that our finding that profilers construct profiles that are longer and that contain more predictions does not in itself mean that those profiles are necessarily more useful to investigations. In other words, quantity does not mean quality. Indeed, the best profile would be the shortest, containing only the correct name and address of the offender. However, these results, when combined with earlier results on the accuracy of these same profilers (see Kocsis et al., 2000) suggest that quality and quantity are related, at least in this sample. These same five profilers also produced profiles that were more accurate than did other groups, albeit using a different method for constructing the profile (responses to a multiple-choice questionnaire about the offender). Although these results add to our understanding of the process of psychological profiling, there are many questions that are unresolved. One important question is whether the perceived expertise and value of professionally composed profiles is simply a phenomenon of providing a higher quantitative ratio or proportion of information that is then regarded as insightful. Future research could examine the relationship between the features listed in a profile and the perceptions of investigators as to the usefulness of the profile to the investigation. We also wonder about the similarity between the profiles generated by police officers, psychics, and university students. Although the police officers in this study were not all detectives (indeed, most were not), intuition suggests that police officers would have picked up some special insight into criminal behavior just from their day-to-day, on-the-job experience that would have influenced their construction of a profile. Clearly, certain experiences and knowledge help to produce profiles that contain the richness of information provided by profilers and, to some extent, psychologists. But from where does this knowledge come theoretical study or knowledge of the literature on criminal behavior? Unfortunately, the research does not provide an answer to this question. APPENDIX Physical descriptive features Build: thin, medium, muscular, athletic, and so forth Height Scars, tattoos and so forth on offender s body Race Age Hair color, style, length, condition and so forth Facial appearance (teeth, nose, eyes, clean shaven, beard, moustache, and so forth) Gender

9 Content in Psychological Profiles 45 Nonphysical descriptive features Occupational status and/or level Marital status Intelligence Religious status Family background (any details of offender s family and so forth) Social interests (clubs, sports, hobbies, and so forth) History of romantic and/or sexual relationships Criminal record Military history Educational level Offender living with anyone Mental status: any specific DSM or psychiatric disorder Drugs or alcohol History of offender as child (e.g., abused as a child) Socioeconomic level or status (poor, rich, lower class, middle class, and so forth) Offender s vehicle Distance of residence in relation to crime: Is the offender a local of the neighborhood? Crime scene and/or crime behavioral factors Was the offender familiar with the crime scene? Did the offender steal any items from the victim? Did the offender take any souvenirs? How was the offender s demeanor when committing the crime? Was the offence planned or spontaneous? What were the offender s motives? How did the offender approach the victim: blitz, con, and so forth Was there a prior relationship between the victim and the offender? Did the offender undertake any precautions? Was there any ritualism in the offender s behavior? Did the offender have any fantasies regarding the crime? Was there any remorse regarding the crime? Was there any element of sexuality concerning the offender (e.g., perversion, paraphilia, and so forth) Were there any accomplices? What was the offender s mode of transport (e.g., walking, driving, and so forth) REFERENCES Ainsworth, P. (2001). Offender profiling and crime analysis. London: Willan. Beck, J. P., O Sullivan, B. J., & Ogilvie, A. B. (1989). An Australian violent criminal apprehension programme: A feasibility study. Adelaide, Australia: National Police Research Unit. Boneau, C. A. (1960). The effects of violations of assumptions underlying the t test. Psychological Bulletin, 57, Britton, P. (1998). The jigsaw man. New York: HarperCollins.

10 46 International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology Canter, D. (1994). Criminal shadows. New York: HarperCollins. Copson, G. (1995). Coals to Newcastle: A study of offender profiling (Police Research Group, Special Interest Series). London: Police Research Group, Home Office. Crace, J. (1995, February 17). Inside the criminal mind. New Statesman and Society, pp Darlington, R. B. (1990). Regression and linear models. New York: McGraw-Hill. Douglas, J. E., & Oleshaker, M. (1995). Mindhunter. London: Heineman. Gardner, W., Mulvey, E. P., & Shaw, E. C. (1995). Regression analysis of counts and rates: Poisson, overdispersed Poisson, and negative binomial models. Psychological Bulletin, 118, Geberth, V. J. (1996). Practical homicide investigation: Tactics, procedures and forensic techniques (3rd ed.). Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press. Holm, S. (1979). A simple sequentially rejective multiple test procedure. Scandinavian Journal of Statistics, 6, Holmes, R. M., & Holmes, R. M. (1996). Profiling violent crimes: An investigative tool (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Jackson, J. L., Van Koppen, P. J., & Herbrink, C. M. (1993). Does the service meet the needs? An evaluation of consumer satisfaction with specific profile analysis and investigative advice as offered by the scientific research advisory unit of the National Criminal Intelligence Division (NISCALE Report No. NSCR 93-05). The Netherlands: NISCALE. Kocsis, R. N., Hayes, A. F., & Irwin, H. J. (2002). Investigative experience and accuracy in psychological profiling a violent crime. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 17, Kocsis, R. N., Irwin, H. J., Hayes, A. F., & Nunn, R. (2000). Expertise in psychological profiling: A comparative assessment. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 15, Murphy, B. P. (1976). Comparison of some two sample means tests by simulation. Communications in Statistics Simulation and Computation, 5, Pinizzotto, A. J., & Finkel, N. J. (1990). Criminal personality profiling: An outcome and process study. Law and Human Behavior, 14, Ressler, R. K., Douglas, J., & Burgess, A. W. (1988). Sexual homicide: Patterns and motives. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books. Ressler, R. K., & Shachtman, T. (1992). Whoever fights monsters. New York: Simon & Schuster. Vorpagel, R. E. (1982). Painting psychological profiles: Charlatanism, coincidence, charisma or new science. Police Chief, 3(8), West, A. G. (2001). From offender profiler to behavioral investigative advisor: The effective application of behavioral science to the investigation of major crime. Police Research & Management, 5, Wilson, P. R., Lincoln, R., & Kocsis, R. N. (1997). Validity, utility and ethics of profiling for serial violent and sexual offenders. Psychiatry, Psychology and Law, 4, Zuckerman, E. L. (1995). Clinicians thesaurus: The guidebook for writing psychological reports (4th ed.). New York: Guilford. Richard N. Kocsis Criminal and Forensic Psychologist 16 Lynden Avenue Carlingford Sydney NSW 2118 Australia