Geographic Profiling

Introduction
Geographic profiling is an investigative process rooted in Environmental Criminology (Brantingham & Brantingham 1981) and is a tool used by international police forces, whom use the crime scene locations of a linked series of offences to examine the likelihood of the geographical area the offender most likely works or lives in – known as their anchor point- (Rossmo, 2000a) in order to narrow down the area in which the police will focus their investigation to identify a suspect. This anchor could be anything ranging from their place of residence, their place of employment right through to a friend/family members connection to an area. Such as a life partners residence. Geographical profiling splits offenders into two categories, Marauders and Commuters. Marauder offenders are the offenders who commit crimes close to their anchor point and Commuter offenders travel away from their anchor point to commit crime.
Geographical profiling can be conducted using specialist computer programmes or by employees of the police force whom have been trained in the area of geographical profiling (Bennell, Canter & Snook, 2002).
This essay will critically evaluate the evidence for and against the effectiveness of geographical profiling. Firstly it will evaluate the theories and assumptions behind geographical profiling. Secondly it will evaluate which process works best, the computer program or the human investigator, focusing on the computer program