A Scientific Model of Profiling

Thus far in this book, on the basis of the investigative and forensic science practice literature, the types of crime scene evidence that are typically available and submitted for analysis by law enforcement investigators have been described. The process of crime reconstruction, in which attempts are made to translate these pieces of crime scene evidence into a narrative of crime events and offender behaviors has been discussed and evaluated. Next, the examination of crime scene evidence, offender motives, personality, and behavior in chapters 7 through 10 identified pieces of the science that can be used to build a new scientific model of profiling. Chapters 8 through 10 further demonstrate the primacy of behavior as an expression of both motive and personality. Finally, using arson and sex offending as examples from the psychological and criminological literature, relationships between motive and behavior and personality and behavior have been selectively examined. Consistent with much of the empirical literature in the fields of psychology and criminology, the arson and sex offending literatures have approached the study of motive and personality, respectively, by examining limited, often bivariate relationships between variables of interest (e.g., personality type and type of sex offense; motive and age). The isolated cases in which these relationships have described situations relevant to investigation (e.g., increased violence in the sexual offenses of psychopaths), along with select findings from the multidimensional scaling research specific to profiling,