The problem is knowing enough about the investigation and the ways the crime was solved to be able to difinitively state that the crime was, or was not, solved by profiling.
Heck, I gave an example ages ago in this thread of a crime which the FBI allegedly claimed was solved by profiling, but sadly the actual details of the investigation available to internet-based amateurs are sketchy at best, so that claim could not really be evaluated with any clarity one way or another.
We simply lack inside police expertise and knowledge of how individual cases are solved. Lacking actual data, this argument is (as we have seen) a sort of pointless exercise, somewhat reminisent of a Monty Python sketch. Though I’m inclined to agree with the premise that profiling is often similar to cold-reading (albeit I suspect not a deliberate exercise in deception - more akin to investigators fooling themselves), data to investigate the matter one way or the other lacks.
The shooter graduated from high school, applied, was admitted, and enrolled at Virginia Tech. He could very well have written, under the question, Why do you want to go to Virginia Tech?, “So I can commit the deadliest college shooting before committing suicide. I’ll need four years to plan and, while I won’t be able graduate, it’ll be worth it.”
The Gladwell article linked on the first page describes a scene of three FBI profilers (includingJohn Douglas, who is one of the pioneers of this technique and whose book I have read) spitballing about the BTK killer. It’s pretty clear they’re just talking out of their asses:
The entire converstaion does sound like something out of the TV show, Criminal Minds, but a lot less specific.
I don’t understand what you think this means. Were talking about suspects whose identity is still unknown. If all you know is that a guy shot up a school, you can’t conclude that he was necessarily a student, even if the profile predicts it.
I am not at all expert in forensic psychology or criminal profiling. However, this problem should be no more or less difficult to resolve than any other activity in psychological research.
I did a PsycInfo search on “criminal profiling,” and came up with a total of 274 articles. This tells me off the bat that not a lot of research has been done on this specific topic. A cursory review of the references indicated that many of the publications were either books, book chapters or book reviews, a bad sign, since these are not peer reviewed publications and often do not include new empirical analyses. Furthermore, one researcher’s name in particular showed up repeatedly, another bad sign regarding the state of the literature.
It may be possible that searching on another term might reveal another more well-developed segment of the literature, but I did not want to invest the time to do so.
Instead, I tried to find recent review articles to get an impression of the current state of things, and most of what I found was consistent with the following two articles, which I found through google scholar. I have quoted the abstracts of the articles below.
Brent Snook, Richard M. Cullen, Craig Bennell, Paul J. Taylor and Paul Gendreau
The Criminal Profiling Illusion : What’s Behind the Smoke and Mirrors?
Criminal Justice and Behavior 2008 35: 1257
DOI: 10.1177/0093854808321528
The online version of this article can be found at: http://cjb.sagepub.com/content/35/10/1257
Christopher Devery
Criminal Profiling and Criminal Investigation
Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice 2010 26: 393
DOI: 10.1177/1043986210377108
Again, this is not a thorough review, but a cursory scan through the literature. My impression based on this is that little to no empirical evidence exists to support any accuracy or validity for criminal profiling.
That’s his problem. Personally, I’m open to being convinced either way. The problem is that he has flatly stated that profiling has NEVER been useful, when it’s pretty clear that he is in no position to evaluate such a statement.
If you want though, we can start with an explanation of the methodology that he used to arrive at his conclusion. We can then determine if one can safely conclude that profiling has NEVER – not even once – been instrumental in solving a crime.
Diogenes claims to have arrived at this rigorous and extreme conclusion. It’s up to him to present his work. It’s not up to us to explain how he could justify his conclusion. Heck, for all you know, he might surprise us with the brilliance and innovativeness of his detective work. I’m willing to wait for that.
Again, you’re treating this whole issue as though Diogenes should be considered right until he is proven wrong. Logic doesn’t work that way, and I think you know that.
I am absolutely right and you know it. That’s what’s driving you so crazy. My cite is the undisputed fact that the discipline has no real scientific grounding, that it’s indistingushible from cold reading, and that no one can find a case where it ever solved a crime.
No-I’m treating this whole issue as though it was about the accuracy of criminal profiling. The fact that so far, according to the sources supplied to date, he seems to be correct is beside the point. If your problem is that it is Dio holding this viewpoint, then I am not the one off-topic.
Comparing the Beltway sniper attacks to the Virginia Tech massacre:
[QUOTE=Virginia Tech Report]
It was reasonable albeit wrong that the VTPD thought this double murder was most likely the result of a domestic argument, given the facts they had initially, including the knowledge that the last person known to have been with the female victim was her boyfriend who owned a gun and cared greatly for her, according to police interviews, plus the fact that she was shot with a young man in her room under the circumstances found.
[/QUOTE]
In the Beltway sniper attacks, they could have stopped them if they realized the profile might be wrong. In the Virginia Tech massacre, they could have prevented the second shooting if they realized that the first shooting was only made to look like a domestic argument.
How much “work” would convince you? Without a goal in mind, why would anyone bother? On the other hand, if someone could come up with just one profile that was instrumental in solving a case, he could be proved wrong. Logic tells us which is the simpler task to accomplish…and reason tells us why you choose the other path.
As I mentioned before, it’s not possible to solve a crime using profiling. Profiling is an investigative tool that narrows down the pool of suspects in some way.
For this reason, I asked you to define, precisely, what you meant by “solving.”
If you mean that profiling identified a single suspect and produced the evidence to convict, then I agree with you: profiling never solved a single crime.
But when I say “Profiling helps to solve crimes,” I mean that the use of the technique helpfully narrows the pool of suspects in some way.
