International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology 59(3)
likely offender in both a murder and sexual assault case. As the utilized case materials were from previously resolved crimes, the correct answers, in terms of the actual char- acteristics of the responsible perpetrators, were known. Thus, a mechanism for mea- surement was developed wherein the responses by the various participants could be cross checked with the characteristics of the actual perpetrator and thus scored by their degree of correspondence and hence accuracy.
The first study reported in Pinizzotto and Finkel (1990) examined the content of profiles written by the various participants. This analysis found that the profiles writ- ten by the profilers contained far more accurate predictions of the likely offender in both the sexual assault and murder case in comparison with all other groups. This degree of accuracy by the profilers surpassed all the other groups at statistically sig- nificant levels.
Another component featured in Pinizzotto and Finkel (1990) was a line-up exercise in which the various groups of participants were tasked with attempting to identify the correct offender in the sexual assault case from a presented pool of possible offenders. In this task, all of the senior profilers (referred to as “expert/teachers”) achieved a 100% accuracy ratio in correctly selecting the responsible offender while less experi- enced profilers (referred to as “trained profilers”) achieved an 83% accuracy ratio. In comparison, other groups who undertook the identical task only achieved accuracy ratios starting from 67% (detectives), down to 50% for psychologists and 16% for students.
Arguably, the most cited component of Pinizzotto and Finkel’s (1990) research involved the profiling exercise wherein participants made predictions concerning the characteristics of the probable offender via a multiple-choice questionnaire instrument that was thereafter quantitatively scored. That is, via a set of model answers to the questionnaire derived from the actual offenders to the crimes, the accuracy of all pre- dictions could be objectively scored and tabulated. The outcome of this analysis found that the mean accuracy scores of the profilers did not surpass those of the compared groups in the homicide case. However, the accuracy scores of the profilers were found to be superior, and at statistically significant levels, to those of the compared groups when predicting the characteristics of the offender in the sexual assault case.
Adopting a similar quasi-experimental case simulation design and multiple-choice questionnaire, the research of Kocsis, Irwin, Hayes, and Nunn (2000) thereafter exam- ined profiler performance in a murder case and found that on a descriptive level the mean accuracy scores of the sampled profilers surpassed all other participant groups. Moreover, when the various groups were combined into dichotomous categories of profilers versus non-profilers and then compared, the level of accuracy of the profilers was found to be superior at a statistically significant level. Subsequently, the study by Kocsis (2004) again examined the accuracy of profilers but in the context of an arson case. The results of this study found not only a descriptive pattern evidencing superior accuracy among the profilers but also results at statistically significant levels. Although primarily focused upon examining cognitive mechanisms in profile construction, the pilot study reported in Kocsis, Middledorp, and Try (2005) also featured a small
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subcomponent that again provided some evidence of accuracy among the sampled profilers.
Two large-scale, omnibus-type studies have also been done using differing pools of data taken from various aforementioned studies examining profiling accuracy. The first was reported in Kocsis (2003) that analyzed some previously unused data in con- junction with the samples collected from the studies reported in Kocsis et al. (2000), Kocsis, Hayes, and Irwin (2002) and Kocsis (2004). The results of this analysis found that the accuracy levels among the profilers clearly surpassed that of all the variously compared groups of participants. Thereafter, Kocsis et al. (2008) reported on two fur- ther analyses that involved differing participant pools derived from the studies by Pinizzotto and Finkel (1990) as well as those previously described by Kocsis and col- leagues. Unlike the study reported in Kocsis (2003), these analyses merged the data- pools into dichotomous categorizations with participants being classified as either “profiler” or “non-profiler” and then contrasted their performance differences in terms of accuracy. Both of these analyses found that the profilers demonstrated superior accuracy and at statistically significant levels however, some limitations were noted with these findings (see Kocsis, 2010, 2013, for a discussion of this).
In summary, while there is unquestionably scope for further research examining the merits of criminal profiling (see Kocsis, 2006a, 2006b, 2010, 2013; Kocsis et al., 2008), the aforementioned material collectively provides compelling evidence indicat- ing that suitably skilled individuals who operate under the colloquial mantle of “pro- filer” can demonstrate accuracy in their predictions.