Offender Profiling: Jack The Ripper

In the 19th century, the streets of London were terrorized by whom many have deemed the first notorious serial killer, Jack the Ripper. Jack killed prostitutes on the streets but was never caught. He left notes taunting investigators. Jack the Ripper has went down in history as the world’s first infamous serial killer, sadly he would not be the last. All throughout the 20th century, infamous serial killers like Ted Bundy, Ed Gein, Pedro Lopez, and the Zodiac killer killed dozens of people. Eventually the FBI started using a new investigative tool to help catch serial offenders called offender profiling. Profiling has gained popularity in recent years due to popular movies and TV shows like Criminal Minds, but is profiling really effective in
Profiling rarely leads investigators directly to the offender but it does tell them the person most likely to have done it. Profiling an offender’s likely characteristics has been divided into three major branches-statistical profiling, clinical profiling, and FBI profiling. Statistical profiling looks at statistics to help with the profile (basically math), clinical profilers rely on experience working with offenders like interviews, and the FBI uses typologies (Bull, Cooke, Hatcher, Woodhams, Bilbly, Grant, 24-25). Profiling is most often used in serial murders and rapes because these are often the most difficult to solve because the victims are chosen at random (Ainsworth, 20-21). The process of criminal profiling is broken down into seven steps: evaluation of the criminal act itself, evaluation of crime scene specifics, victim analysis, evaluation of the preliminary police report, evaluation of the ME’s autopsy protocol, developing the profile with offender’s characteristics, and investigative suggestions based off
Early on in a offender’s career, their first few victims will most likely be close to their area of residence because the offender will feel more comfortable working in an area they are familiar with (Lyle, 65). Most offenders though, will not want to commit their crimes to close to their residence though because even though the travel is minimal, the likelihood of being recognized and caught is greater. This is called the Buffer Zone (Bull, Cooke, Hatcher, Woodhams, Bilby, Grant, 21). When deciding how far to travel to commit a crime, the offender will way the risk vs. reward too see if it is worth it too travel a long distance to commit a crime (Bull, Cooke, Hatcher, Woodhams, Bilby, Grant, 21). Geographical profilers have also made a separate classification for the area surrounding the offender’s home (home range) vs. the area in which their offences occur (criminal range) (Bull Cooke, Hatcher, Woodhams, Bilby, Grant, 21). Based on these two classifications, offenders are either classified as a hunter or a poacher. A hunter will have an overlapping home range and criminal range, meaning their crimes are being committed very close to their home. A poacher, on the other hand, will not have an overlapping criminal and home range, meaning that the offender traveled further to commit their crimes (Bull, Cooke, Hatcher,