Real life police Crackers 'never solve cases and are on a par with fortune tellers'

Criminal profilers who try to get inside the minds of serial killers are worthless purveyors of bad science, a leading psychologist claims. Professor Craig Jackson likened them to ‘witch doctors’ and said their techniques were based on unproven, untested ideas.

The work of profilers has caught the public imagination through TV and film portrayals such as the Fitz character played by Robbie Coltrane in the 1990s series Cracker. But, though they are routinely used by police in major murder hunts, they have never led to the direct capture of a killer.

‘Behavioural profiling has never led to the direct apprehension of a serial killer or murderer, so it seems to have no real-world value,’ said Professor Jackson. ‘There have been no clinical trials to show that behavioural profiling works and there have been major miscarriages of justice. ‘It’s given too much credibility as a scientific discipline and I think this is a serious issue.’

Profiling involves building up a picture of a suspect from the offender’s methods, choice of victim, and clues at the crime scene. Britain’s best known profiler is Dr Paul Britton, who was involved in the Fred and Rose West killings, and the murders of James Bulger, schoolgirl Naomi Smith and Rachel Nickell.

Professor Jackson will voice his criticisms this week at the British Festival of Science, which opens today at Aston University in Birmingham. Behavioural profiling was adopted by the FBI in the U.S. in 1972 and had been ‘going non-stop ever since’, he said. Although it had provided good material for films and TV, there is no evidence it did any good.

‘This is an appeal to use better science in this field, otherwise it will go the same way as parapsychology and reading tea leaves or tarot cards,’ he said.

Typically criminal profilers portrayed themselves more as witch doctors than scientists, presenting themselves as people with unusual special gifts that were both a blessing and a burden, said Professor Jackson. ‘They bring themselves forward as if they are shamans cursed with the nightmares of dead people,’ he added. ‘It almost takes us back to primitivism. It isn’t a good advert for science.’

The profession is based on ‘spurious, loose science’ that started in the 1950s using small amounts of data and ‘biased samples’ – serial killers in prison. The professor came to his conclusions after studying U.S. profiling pioneer John E Douglas, who inspired the Jack Crawford character in Thomas Harris’s novel Silence of the Lambs.

Douglas was involved in the hunt for Dennis Rader who killed ten times in Kansas, between 1974 and 1991.

According to Professor Jackson and others, Rader’s profile contributed little to his capture. Professor Jackson’s paper will appear in the journal Amicas next month.

Original report here




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