The Criminal Profiling Illusion

• Author: Paul Gendreau,Richard M. Cullen,Paul J. Taylor,Craig Bennell,Brent Snook
• DOI: 10.1177/0093854808321528
• Published date: 01 October 2008
• Date: 01 October 2008
• Subject Matter: Articles

THE CRIMINAL PROFILING ILLUSION

What’s Behind the Smoke and Mirrors?

BRENT SNOOK

RICHARD M. CULLEN

Memorial University of Newfoundland

CRAIG BENNELL

Carleton University

PAUL J. TAYLOR

Lancaster University

PAUL GENDREAU

University of New Brunswick–Saint John

There is a belief that criminal profilers can predict a criminal’s characteristics from crime scene evidence. In this article, the

authors argue that this belief may be an illusion and explain how people may have been misled into believing that criminal

profiling (CP) works despite no sound theoretical grounding and no strong empirical support for this possibility. Potentially

responsible for this illusory belief is the information that people acquire about CP,which is heavily influenced by anecdotes,

repetition of the message that profiling works, the expert profiler label, and a disproportionate emphasis on correct predic-

tions. Also potentially responsible are aspects of information processing such as reasoning errors, creating meaning out of

ambiguous information, imitating good ideas, and inferring fact from fiction. The authors conclude that CP should not be

used as an investigative tool because it lacks scientific support.

Keywords: criminal profiling; police investigations; belief formation; pseudoscience

Criminal profiling (CP) is the practice of predicting a criminal’s personality, behavioral,

and demographic characteristics based on crime scene evidence (Douglas, Ressler,

Burgess, & Hartman, 1986; Hicks & Sales, 2006).1This practice is being utilized by police

agencies around the world despite no compelling scientific evidence that it is reliable, valid,

or useful (Snook, Eastwood, Gendreau, Goggin, & Cullen, 2007). This disparity between

the use and the lack of empirical support leads one to consider the question Why do people

believe CP works despite the lack of evidence? We explain this criminal profiling illusion

in terms of the nature of the information about CP that is presented to the people and how

they process that information.

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CRIMINAL JUSTICE AND BEHAVIOR, Vol. 35 No. 10, October 2008 1257-1276

DOI: 10.1177/0093854808321528

© 2008 International Association for Correctional and Forensic Psychology

AUTHORS’ NOTE: We thank Inspector John C. House for his insightful comments on drafts of this article.

Support for the research reported in this article was provided to the first author by the Natural Sciences and

Engineering Research Council of Canada. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to

Brent Snook, Psychology Department, Science Building, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John’s, NF

A1B 3X9, Canada; e-mail: bsnook@play.psych.mun.ca.

Our article is divided into five sections. First, we outline current knowledge of CP tech-

niques, the frequency with which CP is used in criminal investigations, and the extent to which

police officers and mental health professionals perceive CP as a valuable tool. Second, we

argue that CP has no basis in scientific theory and has meager empirical support as an inves-

tigative tool. The third and fourth sections are devoted to a consideration of how the discrep-

ancy may have arisen between the lack of evidence supporting CP practices and beliefs about

its effectiveness. Specifically, in the third section, we discuss some of the ways that informa-

tion about CP is distorted as it is conveyed. In the fourth section, we discuss some cognitive

tendencies that are useful for learning and reasoning but appear to have led police officers, pro-

filers, and the rest of us to form an illusory belief about CP. Fifth, we conclude by arguing that

CP should not be used as an investigative tool until it receives adequate scientific support.

THE CRIMINAL PROFILING ENVIRONMENT

Constructing a profile of an unknown criminal typically involves three stages (Hicks &

Sales, 2006; Homant & Kennedy, 1998). Police officers collect crime scene data (e.g.,

photographs, detective reports, and autopsy results). These data are then forwarded to a pro-

filer who makes predictions about the personality, behavioral, and demographic character-

istics of the likely criminal. These predictions are then reported to the investigating officers.

In principle, CP differs little from what so-called psychic detectives allegedly do in help-

ing law enforcement agencies catch criminals or find missing persons (see Lyons & Truzzi,

1991; Nickell, 1994; O’Keeffe & Alison, 2000; Wiseman, West, & Stemman, 1996).

Although there are no standardized techniques for making these predictions, the differ-

ent approaches to CP can be broadly classified as having a clinical or statistical orientation.2

Clinically oriented profilers draw on their training, knowledge, experience, and/or intuition

to predict offender characteristics (e.g., Ault & Reese, 1980; Copson, Badcock, Boon, &

Britton, 1997; Douglas & Munn, 1992; Holmes & Holmes, 1996; Keppel & Walter, 1999;

Turvey, 1999; West, 2000). By contrast, statistically oriented predictions are derived from

an analysis of offenders who have previously committed crimes that are judged as similar

to those being investigated (e.g., Canter & Fritzon, 1998; Davies, Wittebrood, & Jackson,

1997; Farrington & Lambert, 1997; Jackson, van den Eshof, & de Kleuver, 1997; Keppel

& Weis, 1993; Santilla, Häkkänen, Canter, & Elfgren, 2003).

Published accounts testify to prolific growth in the utilization of CP techniques. For

example, between 1971 and 1981, the FBI provided CP assistance on 192 occasions

(Pinizzotto, 1984). A few years later, Douglas and Burgess (1986) indicated that FBI pro-

filers were being asked to assist in 600 criminal investigations per year. A more recent

account indicated that CP was applied by 12 FBI profilers in approximately 1,000 cases per

year (Witkin, 1996). Police officers in the United Kingdom also appear to be incorporating

CP into their investigations more frequently. Copson (1995), for instance, reported that 29

profilers were responsible for providing 242 instances of CP advice between 1981 and

1994, with the prevalence of CP increasing steadily during that period. Other profession-

als, such as police psychologists, are also becoming involved in CP (Bartol, 1996).

Although we do not have exact estimates of CP prevalence elsewhere, its use has been doc-

umented in numerous countries, including Canada, Finland, Germany, Sweden, and the

Netherlands (Åsgard, 1998; Clark, 2002; Jackson, Herbrink, & van Koppen, 1997).

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