A Study on the Effectiveness of Criminal Profiling

Abstract

Criminal profiling, also known as offender profiling is designed to predict the characteristics of unknown criminal perpetrator through an analysis of the crime scene. Until now, there has been conflict about the effectiveness of criminal profiling among academics. In this study, 113 police investigators', working in serious crime divisions, were interviewed about their experiences with criminal profiling, and their belief about its effectiveness. 63.7% of the respondents agreed that criminal profiling is a valuable investigative tool and 62.8% agreed that profilers are valuable to criminal investigations. A total of 31.8% agreed that profilers help the police identify offenders and 15.0% agreed that there is no risk of profiler misdirecting and investigation. 61.5% of the respondents who had reported using a profile agreed that profiling is helpful and 71.4% told that they would use profiling again in the future.