Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Notes
1. It should be noted that the authors are unaware of any approach or school of thought to the technique of criminal profiling supposedly encompassed under this “trait-based” rubric that accepts this characterization as a valid representation of their methods (Kocsis, 2007b).
2. Indeed, beyond the concerns noted in Dern, Dern, Horn, and Horn (2009), apparent inac- curacies and/or mischaracterizations of profiling methods and/or concepts by various com- mentators appear to be a recurring problem (e.g., Douglas, 2007; Kocsis, 2006b, 2010, 2013; Kocsis, Middledorp, & Karpin, 2008).
3. In this context, the operationalization of these studies arguably does not even seem congru- ent with any personality theory from the discipline of psychology but seem more reminis- cent of criminological phrenology.
4. Indeed, complicating this issue further is some scope to fundamentally question what are the methods for constructing criminal profiles. There are numerous process models can- vassing proposed descriptions for the construction of criminal profiles (e.g., Douglas & Burgess, 1986; Schlesinger, 2009). However, what appears lacking is empirically based testing of how criminal profiles are, in fact, constructed in actual practice (e.g., Kocsis, 2006a; Pinizzotto & Finkel, 1990). Complicating this point even further is the existence of differing schools of thought to criminal profiling (see Palermo, 2002; Palermo & Kocsis, 2005) and thus the question is not merely one of how profiles are constructed but also by whom.
5. In 2012, an estimated 14,827 persons were murdered in the United States. During the same year, there were an estimated 354,520 robberies and an estimated 2,103,787 burglaries (U.S. Department of Justice-Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2013).
6. It should be noted that other variables have been noted to potentially impact upon the effi- cacy of profiling (e.g., Van der Kemp & Van Koppen, 2007).
328 International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology 59(3)
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