The Art and Science of Criminal Profiling
Intuition, experience, and grit vs. statistics
When I read a missing person’s case, I’m sucked in — trying to piece together the few clues to imagine who the culprit is. As true crime readers know, this is a hazard of delving into hundreds of murder stories. You begin to see patterns, whether you want to or not.
Are you just as likely to come up with a good profile as an FBI agent?
You might be. It all depends on how that agent uses his experience and gut instincts, and how methodical and fact-based your sleuthing is.
The study
One method of doing research is by examining other researchers’ published studies, which is called a systematic review. This goes along with pulling data from dozens or hundreds of academic papers, pooling it, and re-analyzing it, which is termed meta-analysis.
To study whether criminal profiling works, and how it does, two psychologists reviewed 426 publications.
In 2018, Drs. Fox and Farrington published a systematic review and meta-analysis of all research done to date about the accuracy of criminal profiling, looking at research from 1976 to 2016. Their results showed that while Offender Profiling (OP) is becoming more scientifically rigorous, there are huge…
