What is Geographic Profiling? Part 6 of 7 of the ‘What is Investigative Psychology?’ series

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Geographic profiling is a major aspect of investigative psychology. It seeks to use offenders’ decision-making on where and when they choose to offend to either catch them in the act, prioritise

suspects based on where they live or hang out or to seek further intelligence and evidence on the suspect. GP is able to infer an offender’s familiarity with the area where the crime occurred, why

they were there by analysing the locations and timings of offences. It has been found that criminals do not tend to travel far from their base to commit their offences (Bennell, C., & Canter, D. V.

(2002). Linking commercial burglaries by modus operandi: Tests using regression and ROC analysis.

Science & Justice, 42, 153–164); (Goodwill, A. M., & Alison, L. J. (2006). The development of a filter model for prioritising suspects in burglary offences. Psychology, Crime & Law, 12, 395–416)

unless their particular target is not available in their vicinity. The utility of GP really came to the fore in the context of serious serial crimes, when psychologist David Canter assisted police in identifying the so-called ‘Railway Rapists’ who had devolved into murderers in the 1980s (Canter, D. (2003) Mapping Murder: Walking in Killers’ Footsteps. Virgin Books)....