NCJ Number
206519
Journal
International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology Volume: 48 Issue: 4 Dated: August 2004 Pages: 477-494
Date Published
August 2004
Length
18 pages
Annotation
This study tested the findings of Kocsis and Heller (2004), which indicated that police reliance on criminal profiling has less to do with the proven accuracy of such profiling than with the belief among police officers that such profiling is a valid and useful science.
Abstract
In the current study, participants were 353 freshman students (52 percent male and 48 percent female) from a major Australian university. All participants reported having no previous experience and/or specific knowledge about law enforcement, forensic psychology, or any disciplinary background related to criminal psychological profiling; however, they did indicate some awareness of the technique. Although the participants in the current study were similar to those who participated in Kocsis and Heller's study, the current study used an original sample. The survey instrument was distributed at a regularly scheduled lecture where the voluntary participation of students was requested, and the volunteers completed the survey instrument during the intermission break of the lecture. A total of 360 survey instruments were distributed, and 353 were returned. The survey instrument was composed of three broad sections. The first section of the instrument replicated the instrument used by Kocsis and Heller. This section contained a cover page and the Belief in Profiling Scale. Three different cover pages accompanied this section. They varied considerably in content and represented either a positive, neutral, or negative view of the profiling technique. The first section of the instrument also contained a five-item scale designed to measure a participant's belief in the ability of a profile/profiler to predict the attributes of an unknown offender. The second section of the survey instrument contained a paragraph that described a murder that had occurred in Australia. The description provided only minimal information about the murder. Participants were given a paragraph that presented a criminal psychological profile written by one of two different people in response to the request of the detective who investigated the murder. Participants were informed that the profile was written by a person who had been given all the information the investigator had on the case. In one case, the students were told the profiler was a professional profiler who was consulted by the investigator. Under the second condition, the profile was written by an anonymous person consulted by the investigator. The third section of the questionnaire consisted of questions about the profile presented in section two. The findings from this study confirmed Kocsis and Heller's earlier findings regarding a positive relationship between a general belief about the validity of profiling and perceptions of the accuracy of a particular profile. The more an individual believed in profiling, the more likely he/she was to accept its accuracy. This link was most pronounced in participants' perceptions of information contained in a profile of an unknown offender's behavior in committing a crime and past history. The more an individual believed in profiling, the more he/she was likely to accept the validity of linking behavior interpreted from the crime scene with elaborations of the offender's past behavioral history. This relationship did not hold when information in the same profile referred to physical features of the offender. 4 tables, 38 references, and appended samples of study materials