Criminal profiling and public policy

Abstract

Over the past 25 years, criminal profiling as a tool for solving crimes has been popularized with the public through literature, film, and television. Additionally, profiling's successful contribution to the resolution of a few high-profile cases has also served to increase the practice's standing in the public square. But fundamentally, the fate of criminal profiling as a tool of law enforcement is a public policy issue. As such, it is the various apparatuses of government that will dictate the scope and regularity of its use. The executive, legislative, and judicial functions of government in the United States and other nations all have particular roles to play in the proliferation or diminution of profiling as a practice. Law enforcement and mental health practitioners are not the only criminal profiling stakeholders. Those connected to the emerging discipline of criminal profiling would do well to remain attuned to their broader constituencies in the public policy arena-namely, those who craft criminal justice public policy, those who would fund it, and those who would sanction its legality. © 2007 Humana Press.