NCJ Number
216128
Journal
International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology Volume: 50 Issue: 4 Dated: August 2006 Pages: 458-477
Date Published
August 2006
Length
20 pages
Annotation
This article's author (Richard Kocsis) identifies and discusses misconceptions in Bennell, Jones, Taylor, and Snook's (2006) critique of his published work on the validities and abilities of criminal profiling, with attention to the concept of "investigative psychology" coined by David Canter (1990s) to describe his research on criminal profiling.
Abstract
Central to Kocsis' assessment of criminal profiling has been his claim that no original, quantitative research has impartially tested the accuracy of profilers in their predictions of the characteristics of perpetrators of particular crimes compared with the actual characteristics of the persons convicted of those crimes. Bennell et al., who are proponents of Canter's concept of investigative psychology, challenge Kocsis' research from this perspective. Investigative psychology is based in the belief that the characteristics of a crime and the methods used to commit it provide the empirical data that can be analyzed by forensic psychologists to determine the psychological and behavioral characteristics of the person who committed the crime, which can then be useful in conducting the investigation. Kocsis notes that although proponents of investigative psychology have produced publications on their work over the years, he knows of no independently conducted, empirically robust, and scientifically peer-reviewed study that shows a sample of qualified experts in investigative psychology can construct an accurate criminal profile. In the current article, Kocsis notes that although Bennell et al. apparently support his argument for more empirical research on the effectiveness and validity of criminal profiling, they have no plans or inclination to conduct their own original data-driven experiments to test the findings of Kocsis' and similar studies on the validity of criminal profiling. 18 notes and 27 references