Category:Offender profiling

Articles relating to offender profiling, an investigative strategy used by law enforcement agencies to identify likely suspects. It has been used by investigators to link cases that may have been committed by the same perpetrator.^[1] Multiple crimes may be linked to a specific offender and the profile may be used to predict the identified offender's future actions. In the 1980s, most researchers believed offender profiling was relevant only to sex crimes, like serial rape or sexual homicide, but since the late 1990s research has been published to support its application to arson (1998), and then later terrorism (2000) and burglary (2017).^[2]

The first offender profile was assembled by detectives of the Metropolitan Police on the personality of Jack the Ripper,^[3] a serial killer who had murdered a series of prostitutes in the 1880s. Police surgeon Thomas Bond was asked to give his opinion on the extent of the murderer's surgical skill and knowledge.^[4] Bond's assessment was based on his own examination of the most extensively mutilated victim and the post mortem notes from the four previous canonical murders.^[5] In his notes, dated November 10, 1888, Bond mentioned the sexual nature of the murders coupled with elements of apparent misogyny and rage. Bond also tried to reconstruct the murder and interpret the behavior pattern of the offender.