FBI Criminal Profiling, Unreliable?

Last years November 17th issue of New Yorker magazine, Malcom Gladwell dissected the effectiveness of criminal profiling by the FBI and exposed its weaknesses by showing how the methods in developing a profile held little scientific or deductive merit. A year later, there is still little scientific evidence that validates the profiling methods of the FBI.

In an older (1998) article Brent E. Turvey points out two methods of criminal profiling. The method he criticizes as inductive criminal profiling fall under the same scrutiny as Gladwell's criticisms of the FBI's methods. But Turvey's embraced method of profiling, which he calls deductive criminal profiling, attempts to measure a profile through forensic evidence, crime scene analysis and victimology rather than anecdotal experience of the profile, prior studies and data sources that inductive profiling is reliant upon.

It is no mystery that the popularity of profiling has boomed through media exposure. Many people fail to separate the myths that they see on TV with what actually is/can be done in real life. Both men, Turvey and Gladwell, provide strong argument against the profiling methods that the FBI have claimed to use; the same methods commonly seen on television in crime dramas. Criminal profiling has its uses as a supplement to "old school" detective work but it is clearly not a replacement.

Malcom Gladwell's Dangerous Minds

Brent E. Turvey's Deductive Criminal Profiling