Offender profiling and criminal differentiation

Purpose. The psychological hypotheses that form the foundations for ‘Offender Profiling’ are identified and the research that has tested them is reviewed. Argument. ‘Offender profiling’ is taken to be the derivation of inferences about acriminal from aspects of the crime(s) he or she has committed. For this process to move beyond deduction based on personal opinion and anecdote to an empirically based science, a number of aspects of criminal...