Offender Profiling

Have the lambs stopped Screaming?

Academy Award Winning Film Silence of the Lambs popularized and universalized the concept of criminal profiling also known as Offender profiling. An investigative vice used by law enforcement agencies to discover likely suspects and analyze patterns and behaviours that may predict future offenses and/or victims. In the Hollywood Blockbuster Jodie Foster stars as an FBI agent trying to hunt down an active serial killer Buffalo Bill with help from Dr. Hannibal Lecter, a forensic psychiatrist and cannibalistic serial killer famously played by Sir Anthony Hopkins. He offers a psychological profile of Buffalo Bill based on the case evidence. The audience sees Jodie Foster’s Character says “Well, he’s a white male”
British Forensic Psychologist David Canter says, that utmost and foremost all of those inferences should come from empirical, peer-reviewed research, not only from investigative experience.

The leading British Forensic Psychologist opinion is that his approach to Offender Profiling is called Investigative Psychology. Canter believes his area of applied psychology goes further and beyond what is known as Offender Profiling. Canter is recognized as the founder and Director of the International Academy for Investigative Psychology. He has authored several books on criminal psychology, he believes that Profiling is subjective and intuitive.

The development of the scientific psychological approach to Police work is thanks to David Canter who evolved his perspective to the field of investigative psychology when he shepherd the police between 1975 and 1986 on the Railway Rapist case in London. Canter believes that when a crime is committed it is in part like a mirror of the everyday attributes and behaviour of the criminal in their normal daily life. In the Railway Rapist case Carter placed all the rape cases on a map and this allowed him to theorize about where the rapist could possibly live. He labelled them as ‘marauders’ or ‘commuters.’ This would depend on whether they commit a crime from within
including refining the organized/disorganized dichotomy into a continuum and developing other classification schemes. In a homicide case, the FBI agents gain insight into personality through questions about the murderer's behavior at four crime phases: Antecedent: What fantasy or plan, or both, did the murderer have in place before the act? What caused the criminal to commit a crime some days and not others? Method and manner: What type of person / persons harmed did the murderer select? What was the procedure and way in which things were committed in the criminal? Body disposal: Did the criminal leave the victim at the scene or leave with the victim. Post offense behavior: Is the murderer trying to administer himself into the enquiry of investigation by trying to contact investigators as in the Son of Sam: David Berkowitz, who left notes at crime scene for Police.

Investigative Psychology is a growing and constantly evolving discipline in the area of applied psychology which has a vast range of psychology in ways that can contribute to all areas of criminal and civil enquiries. Investigative Psychology looks at all the areas that relate to the management, investigation, prosecution of crime and the defense of