A Brief History of Criminal Profiling

Criminal profiling, sometimes called offender profiling, has been described as a technique based in psychology and utilized in law enforcement whereby the behavior and personality of an offender during a crime or series of crimes is examined and evaluated, in an attempt to infer attributes and characteristics about the probable offender such as their age, gender, sexuality, education, type of employment, general appearance, mentality and aspects of their personality.

The totality of these characteristics produce what is commonly called a criminal profile of the unknown subject, commonly called the ＂unsub.＂

The person or persons who create the profile are sometimes called profilers though the term ＂profiler＂ is far less prevalent today.
So, simply speaking, profiling can be described as the identification of specific attributes of an offender committing a particular crime by a thorough and systematic observational process assisted by an analysis of the crime scene, the victim, the forensic evidence, and the known facts of the crime.

In the area of science three types of professionals can be engaged in the investigation of criminal behavior; behavioral scientists, social scientists, and forensic scientists. But profiling is not exclusively a science; nor is it an art. In fact, there is still confusion as to the meaning and use of the term ＂profile＂. Various agencies use the term to describe different activities. Furthermore, the image of the profiler, as created by popular media such as the motion picture Hannibal and television series Criminal Minds has so compounded the problem, that this media image has begun to influence some academics about what profiling actually consists of. To add to this confusion there are even different types of profiling and different approaches to profiling. This book will endeavor to demystify the various terms for you. Criminal profiling has been referred to, among other less common terms, as behavioral profiling, crimes scene profiling, offender profiling, psychological profiling and criminal investigative analysis.

Some of these terms are interchangeable and some are not. For example, Kocsis, Cooksey, and Irwin (2004), provide their interpretation of criminal psychological profiling. They describe it as a technique used during an investigation whereby crime behaviors are analyzed for identifying possible distinct offender characteristics.

David Elio Malocco was born in Dundalk, County Louth, Ireland. His father was born in Casalattico in Frosinone in Italy and his mother was born in Monaghan in Ireland. He was educated at the Christian Brothers School in Dundalk and his parents later sent him to St. Patrick’s College in Cavan where they hoped he would be ordained as a Roman Catholic priest. But he chose law and business instead. He received his Bachelor of Civil Law degree from University College Dublin and spent fifteen years as a criminal lawyer before taking a second degree at the Open University, Milton Keynes in England where he obtained a first class honors degree in Psychology majoring in Cognitive Development. In 1991 he realized a personal ambition and moved to New York where he studied film direction, production and writing for film at New York University. Since then he has written numerous screenplays in several genre and has written, produced and directed numerous shorts and three feature films, Virgin Cowboys, Magdalen and Jack Gambel: The Enigma. He later studied creative writing at Oxford University. He has written several books on true crime and forensic science. The books were motivated by dual diplomas he had taken. The first was in the Psychology of Criminal Profiling and the second in Forensic Science specializing in crime scene analysis. His publications include: Who’s Who Serial Killers: The Top 100; Murder for Profit: They Killed for Money; Sexual Psychopaths: British Serial Killers; Serial Sex Killers: Real American Psychos; Wicked Women; I am a Cannibal: A Study of Anthropophagy; The World’s Worst Serial Killers; Criminal Profiling: A Basic Introduction; The Beatles Conspiracy: John, Paul, George, Ringo and Bill!; Forensic Science: Crime Scene Analysis. Psychotherapy: The Top 50 Theorists and Theories His next book is a discussion on the crime of murder and those who make a living from killing others. Witty, informative and slightly tongue in cheek, it also features evidence from crime scene analyses and is sub-titled How to Commit the Perfect Murder. David is a lifelong supporter of Liverpool Football Club and enjoys filmmaking, writing, drinking wine, cooking and rescuing abandoned and abused dogs.