Geographic Profiling - Predicting A Criminals Base of Operations
When it comes to the science of profiling different types of criminal offenders, there are many different methods and just as many different ways to apply those methods. Geographic profiling is one of those methods.
Geographic profiling is a methodology which works to gain detailed insight into where an offender has their base of operations, based mainly upon the location(s) of the crime scenes. The results gained from this type of offender profiling can greatly assist law enforcement in the prioritizing of suspect investigation, which can be especially helpful in cases where there may be a large number of possible suspects that must be screened.
Origins of Geographic Profiling
The technique that we now formally refer to as geographic profiling came originally out of research performed in 1989 at Simon Fraser University's School of Criminology, located in British Columbia, Canada.
The basic assumption used in geographic profiling is that most offenders will commit crimes in areas that are close to their actual place(s) of residence and that these crimes often occur along paths which they routinely travel, such as their usual route to work. The underlying theme is that of familiarity; these offenders tend more often than not to commit crimes in areas they know very well.
There are four key concepts which guide the study of geographic profiling -
Journey-to-Crime (with a distance decay function)
Crimes are committed close to home and the farther away the criminal is from their home, the less likely they are to commit a crime (distance decay).
Routine Activity Theory
For a crime to actually occur, both the perpetrator and the victim must meet within time and space, possibly within the routine travel routes of the offender, with three essential elements in operation - a motivated offender, an attractive target and the absence of capable guardianship.
Rational Choice Theory
This concept includes such ideas as the least-effort principle and the idea of a buffer zone, which basically means that offenders look for opportunities requiring the least amount of effort while still providing enough space between them and their home to give a sense of security against investigative agencies and their efforts to discover the offender.
Crime Pattern Theory
States that crime opportunities and sites of crimes are not random
Geographic Profiling and the Zodiac
So, what does this have to do with the criminal offender known only as the Zodiac?
In 2007, Paramount Pictures released the movie Zodiac, starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Robert Downey Jr. and Mark Ruffalo, based on the books Zodiac and Zodiac Unmasked which were written by Robert Graysmith. As part of the promotional effort for the film, Paramount created a website which contained a variety of interesting Zodiac-related content. One of these was an interview done with Dr. Kim Rossmo, PhD, University Chair in Criminology and Director of the Center for Geospatial Intelligence and Investigation in the School of Criminal Justice and Criminology at Texas State University.
Dr. Rossmo, it turns out, was one of the key players who helped create the field of geographic profiling and has been an advocate for its' use in helping solve crime ever since. In the documentary, Dr. Rossmo used computer software, developed using the principals of geographic profiling, and applied it to the Zodiac crimes. The resulting information produced by the software indicated a number of locations in and around the city of Vallejo where the Zodiac might have in fact lived or worked at the time of the crimes.
Of course, as Dr. Rosmo makes clear in the documentary, geographic profiling cannot solve a crime. There are only three ways to do that - an eyewitness, a confession or physical evidence which points directly at a suspect. However, the process of mapping likely geographic locations of where an offender might have their home is one way to help get the information that could help solve a crime.
"What geographic profiling does is it takes a look at the locations of a connected series of incidents - say murders in a serial murder case or robberies in a serial bank robber case - and it spatially analyzes the point pattern of incidents, and creates a probability surface from those, working from the basis of an algorithm that says people offend close to where they live, but not too close."
Dr. Kim Rossmo, PhD
References
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