every week I watch Criminal Minds - a great and entertaining show. But in all my years in the NYPD have I ever recalled a case their BAU solved. NEVER!
Speaking of profiling... here is what John Douglas (
retired FBI profiler) has to say about criminal profiling. (
link )
That said, is/can criminal profiling be useful? I have mixed feelings... as someone who studied forensic psychology, which included the topic of criminal profiling. Most forensic psychology researchers relegate criminal profiling to the corners of their profession. Some even scoff at the idea. Not surprisingly.
I do think geographical profiling has promise. That is, if they can figure out how to get it right. Imo, Rossmo's formula falls sadly short of the mark. Even though he attempts to account for travel distance as opposed to as the crow flies distance, by relying upon the Manhattan distance.
Imho, the primary problem with geographical profiling involves some assumptions upon which it is based (
i.e., comfort zones, revisiting dump sites, & willingness and ability to travel x-miles to both acquire a victim and dump said victim). To some degree, these are canned assumptions that not only can be wrong but can send LE in the completely wrong direction.
All things considered, and, again, imho, at best, we know that people are creatures of habit. And even if some killers attempt to deviate from daily habits, there is a fairly high probability that they'll fall into habits of another sort.
The key, of course, to all of this, involves narrowing the suspect pool, as opposed to actually identifying a suspect. The latter, imo, still requires old-fashioned on the ground gum-shoeing.
And finally welcome aboard. Glad to see you decided to participate in the, sometimes lively, discussions.
