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by Janet E. McClellan, Ph.D.
1/23/2019
Profiling
A bit of history: Offender profiling occurred in law enforcement agencies before the adoption of the current term offender profiling. Before the advent of the contemporary use of the phrase law enforcement investigators, through their practice, experience, and knowledge of criminal offenses within their particular communities would, in instances examine a criminal offense and crime scene for particular features/aspects of the offense to determine whether or not the type of offense and its conduct had been previously identified and linked to an offender or offender type. Within the particular confines of a jurisdiction (Geo-political environment) of a city, county, state, or federal area of law enforcement, some investigators would examine the offense(s) of what at the early stages of investigation might be considered unknown offender(s) in order to determine if such methods of offense had been formerly observed.
Bank robbers, arsonists, rapists, and cat burglars are among the set of criminals which, if they commit enough offenses (the FBI prefers 3+ successes of crime without getting caught to label it a serial offense), can be classified as serial. Unfortunately, we can only count those crimes we know about, so, if a crime is undiscovered or unreported, it is uncounted and the criminal has his/her success.
You can only count the bodies you find and there is no guarantee that the one’s you find represent the first, the first of five, first of ten, or the first of 100.
It should be noted that the term serial, from my perspective, is merely synonymous with successful; meaning that the serial offender manages over a series of criminal events to remain either/or, undetected, unidentified, and not under arrest. In other words, they successfully commit multiple crimes over a period of time without getting caught.
An example of profiling serial offenders who were not purposefully serial killers is the case of Paul Kenneth Keller a serial arsonist.
Profile of an Arsonist: Paul Kenneth Keller
Criminal profile of serial arsonist in Seattle as provided by the FBI in 1992
White
Male
Late teens to early 20s
Alcohol / drug problems
Intelligent
Underachiever
Major life trauma
Salesman / delivery man
The profile was made public; his father identified the elements of the profile with those of his son, and contacted law enforcement authorities who later arrest Paul Kenneth Keller for what they knew then as 75 arsons. Paul Kenneth Keller was ultimately held responsible for more than 105 fires and three deaths associated from those fires in and around the Seattle, Washington area during the early ’90s.
In 1992 the series of suspiciously linked fires were set in Seattle, Washington over a 6-month time period. Churches were among his first targets, then businesses, and then finally homes and multi-family dwellings. The fires terrorized the community of Seattle as nearly every night in Seattle between August 1992 and January 1993 another fire was reported. Frequently during those long months, it was not uncommon for multiple fires to be reported and fought by fire departments. The arson related deaths (homicides) occurred when a most serious fire occurred at a retirement home which ultimately cost the lives of three of its residents.
In setting fires, Paul did not bring material, or other incendiary materials to his targets, rather he used materials that were on hand or immediately available, such as wood, cardboard boxes, trash and discarded fabric materials and would start the fires with a cigarette lighter or matches. It seems as though Paul was fond of setting fires using the trash people and businesses sat out for garbage collection, another key to his activities and behavior.
Paul Kenneth Keller personal background included the fact that he was a White Male, 27 years old when he was arrested. He had been diagnosed as a child as suffering from hyperactivity. Keller had a religious upbringing and attended Baptist services and graduated from a Christian high school. He was briefly married but divorced shortly after in early 1992. That same year he filed for bankruptcy, It was discovered that before his divorce he had begun abusing alcohol and drugs which escalated after the divorce and prior to his arrest. He began to set fires shortly after his divorce.
He worked for his father’s advertising agency as a salesperson in which part of his job required him to travel through the community where the fires would ultimately occur. He was described as being neat and cleanly dressed and possessing a friendly and a non-intimidating disposition. During an interview in prison, Paul indicated to his counselor that he had been sexually assaulted by a volunteer firefighter when he had been 12-years old child.
Keller is currently serving a 99-year sentence and will not be eligible for parole until 2079 when he’ll be held until he is 114 years old.
Some Basics of Criminal Offenses:
In the parlance of crime and its investigation, it is recognized that it essentially takes three (3) things to commit a crime, regardless of the sophistication of that crime or sophistication of the offender.
The three (3) things necessary for the commission of a crime and the proofs required to be demonstrated by its investigation in a court of law are: time, opportunity, and intent.
First, the individual(s) committing the crime must have the clock-time (minutes, hours, days, or more) available to commit the offense without being detected or otherwise deterred from committing the offense, whether the offense is throwing a brick through a window or committing murder. In real terms in some investigations, if one is accused of having committed an offense, one way of eliminating that person as a viable suspect is when that person has an alibi. An alibi eliminates the person from the timing of the commission of an offense as it is used to attempt to demonstrate that no one person can be in two places at once. For example, if the crime took place on January 5, 2015 at 2:45 a.m. in Kansas City, Missouri at the corner of 12th and Vine and I have demonstrable proof that I was holding a lecture in Fairbanks, Alaska at 8:00 a.m. on January 6, 2015 at the university that was observed by numerous people, it would be demonstrably true and accurate that there is no physically possible situation in which I could traveled from Kansas City to Fairbanks in that amount of time.
Secondly, the offender must have and possess the opportunity to commit the offense. Opportunity contains two (2) elements: (a) the object of the offense location, or availability, or condition and (b) the ability to commit the offense, in other words the offender must have the necessary skills, abilities, and/or tools. For example, I could write a bad check because I own a check book; however, I do not have the opportunity (skills) to commit bank fraud because I do not possess the requisite competencies, abilities, training/education, or tools to do so, even if I wanted to.
Lastly, intention (general or specific) must occur. Actions taken or not taken are central not only to a crime; they are aspects of the crime that must be demonstrable in a court of law if law enforcement is to be successful in the prosecution of the assumed offense.
Intent
General intent, by example would include such offenses as running a stop sign. The stop sign is there, traffic law says you must come to a full stop, and failure to do so is an offense, in general, whether you purposefully or unintentionally went past it without stopping, e.g. no need to show or demonstrate it as a deliberate act is required, merely the fact that it was done.
Specific intent, by example, goes to the offender’s state of mind combined with the actual act of the criminal offense. In law, the intentional or knowing, by the offender, that the act(s) they are undertaking or committing (undertook, committed) intended (could or did predict) the outcome (harm, loss, injury) that in fact occurred. If you pick up a loaded gun and fire it at a person, the law will assume (unless otherwise demonstrated) that you know that firing a gun at someone will likely cause severe bodily harm or death of the person at which you shot. Therefore, firing that gun at a person, even if you later say you only did it in fun; you can and will be held responsible for the injury or death of the person shot if the bullet struck them.
In each of the above definition and illustrative contexts, you will note that, in fact we are discussion minor ways of profiling an offender. Specifically, we are looking at the offense and essentially, at its most rudimentary level, determining what it takes to commit an offense and through the process of addition and elimination narrowing our field of suspects from everyone to a more likely and manageable pool of suspects. That more manageable pool of suspects assists in narrowing and thinning the investigative practice and energy of an investigation towards it’s hoped for end result of the identification and apprehension of the person(s) who committed the crime.
Contemporary Profiling
For brevity’s sake, I will limit the listing of techniques and types of profiling to that which involves their use, utility, and functions in criminal justice matters of offenders and offenses. I say that because a complete list of profiling uses and methodologies could fling us far-a-field into such unrelated yet interesting areas of: information sciences for user profiling in data mining to focus marketing, e.g. getting you to buy what they sell; code profiling of computer code developers to identify performance problems so, for example, to help our computer games work; data profiling that summarizes a data-set through the use of descriptive statistics when conducting research (sounds mind-numbing doesn’t it?); DNA profiling (genetic profiling), with the goal of determining a subject’s genetic characteristics that might be important regarding medical issues, genetic matching in crime evidence, or paternity suits; Insurance profiling used to determine the risk (in other words, $$$) that can happened to insurance companies if/when they insure a person or group; and right up to cow profiling to help owners of bovine herds ensure their health and good breeding of their animals.
The list of the uses and importance of profiling is not confined to the arena of criminal justice but rather encompasses a plethora (lots and lots) of contemporary academic, scientific, technological and business practices. However, aside from a listing of all the myriad types of profiling that is conducted in those undertakings, the example list of seven (7) profiling practices noted above provides the reader with an appreciation for the fact that profiling is a valid and reliable process seriously undertaken by a wide and varied range of authorities, disciplines, and practitioners to identify and describe the focus(es) of their investigation(s). Thus, so too is profiling in its varied forms as operationalized in the practice of criminal justice.
A list of profiling processes which can be directly applied to questions related to criminal offense and offender issues to be discussed in this blog in the order in which they appear are,
1. Offender Profiling
2. Victim Profiling
3. Psychological Profiling
4. Crime Profiling
5. Crime Scene Profiling
6. Geographic Profiling
7. Forensic Profiling
In PART III we will explore in depth the seven (7) types of profiling that could be used in a criminal investigation.
