Advances in Offender Profiling: A Systematic Review of the Profiling Literature Published Over the Past Three Decades

Despite the immense popularity of offender profiling as both a topic of fascination for the general public as well as an academic field of study, concerns have been raised about the development of this area of scientific inquiry. The present study provides a preliminary step towards moving the field forward as it reviews the type and quality of studies dealing with offender profiling over the past 31 years. Based on a content analysis of 132 published articles, the review indicates that researchers investigating this phenomenon rarely publish multiple articles, and they are generally reported across many different journals, thereby making knowledge synthesis and knowledge transfer problematic. In addition, the majority of papers published in the area are discussion pieces (e.g., discussing what profiling is, how profiles are constructed, and when profiling is useful), despite the fact that the processes underlying offender profiling are still not well understood. Finally, although peer-reviewed articles exploring this topic have steadily increased, the statistical sophistication of these studies is sorely lacking, with most including no statistics or formal analyses of data. Suggestions for future research and recommendations to streamline efforts in this field are provided based on the results of this review.

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The Science of Criminal Profiling

Criminal Investigative Analysis: A Move Toward a Scientific, Multidisciplinary Model

Criminal Profiling

Notes

In contrast to quantitative summaries of experimental effects, where it is important to include unpublished documents to minimize any potential publication biases (e.g., a tendency for journals to accept manuscripts that report statistically significant findings), omitting unpublished documents from quantitative reviews of the current type is less of a problem.

The problem here was one of distinguishing between cases where a specific crime type was simply mentioned on numerous occasions in an article and cases where that specific crime type was really the focus of the article.

This is also true of course for many of the other researchers included in the sample (e.g., David Canter).

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Authors and Affiliations

1. Department of Psychology, Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, K1S 5B6 Craig Dowden, Craig Bennell & Sarah Bloomfield

1. Craig Dowden