International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology Volume:48 Issue:4 Dated:August 2004 Pages:495 to 503

A neural network applied to criminal psychological profiling: an Italian initiative.

by Marco Strano
Introduction: the use of traditional criminal profiling is efficient only when applied to serial homicides. The criminal psychological profiling is an investigative support tool used by skilled Law Enforcement operators to provide a possible psychological and behavioral profile of an unknown offender. This investigative tool doesnt provide the specific identity of an unknown offender but it indicates the kind of person that most likely has commited a crime by focusing on crime scene analysis. Evidences, in fact, speak their own language that can reveal the salient behavioral and motivational patterns of characteristics of an unknown offender. The systematic application of investigative profiling based on crime scene behavioural analysis is most likely attributed to the work of some FBI special agents in early eighties and, at the moment, is still an investigative technique mainly used in USA. The historical roots of modern Psychological profiling is attributed by some authors to the activity connected to V.I.C.A.P. (Violent Criminal Apprehension Program) elaborated by the Behavioral Science Unit (BSU) at the FBI Academy, Quantico (Virginia). Criminal profiling has been used in several different areas as a mean to narrow the field of investigation. The traditional sectors where profiling is applied are pertinent to the following settings such as serial murders, serial rapes, sexual homicides, child molesters, ritual crimes, arson and hostage taking. In some cases this kind of technique has been also used in identifying anonymous letter writers. Therefore the common characteristic in all the crimes analyzed with criminal profiling technique is seriality (an offender that commits a series of crimes) and the fact that the offenders motive is characterized by a psychopathological shove. The application of statistical methods in this sector is always in function of linking, that try to gain and analyze the common characteristics among a series of events. The linking activity is carried out by worldwide investigative departments mainly with the advent of last generation database. But the investigators cannot use this kind of softwares in sole cases of homicides that,

however, statistically represent the majority of this kind of criminal events. Actually the report between serial and sole cases of homicide is extremely thin. In an European country like Italy during the two decades 19741996 125 homicides attributable to serial killers occurred, while more than 22.000 sole cases of homicide took place for various motivations. In the homicides investigation the number of unsolved cases is very high and draws up in the world on a variable percentage (different for year and geographic area) from 40% to 60% of the crimes commited and this situation stimulates the concentration of criminological research activity targeted to this phenomenon. In this work we propose a new profiling technique applicable even to a sole criminal fact, based on a neural network and on data mining (NNCPP) that is able to carry out a more sophisticated linking activity than the one of traditional database and,for that reason, this kind of system can be successfully applied even to serial murders. The investigative tool proposed is not therefore focused only on the similarities of a case with previous ones but tries to provide a biographical, motivational and psychological profile of an unknown offender of a sole crime starting from a data base and from forensic evidences related to the crime scene and victim, integrated with the feedback based on known offenders characteristics. Various critiques to the scientificity traditional criminal profiling of

Numerous critiques have been moved against this psycho-investigative technique; these critiques were focused on the blurred borderline between instinct and scientific procedures adopted by the profiler that would influence the entire scientificity of the process: (a) Most published accounts on profiling which describe in detail the application of profiling techniques have underlined the tendency to take the form of journalistic articles or novel rather than a systematic scientific work and, for this reason, they are difficult to evaluate from the scientific point of view (Godwin, 2001) (b) Most published works that claim new or recent findings in criminal profiling and/or serial offenders are often a reassessment or a criticism of old theories on the subject and point out the lack of real empirical research in this field. Most published books on serial killers have been written by authors that have never talked with a murderer and most published accounts on profiling techniques have been written by authors that have never been on a crime scene.

International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology Volume:48 Issue:4 Dated:August 2004 Pages:495 to 503

(c) The majority of the actual knowledges on profiling techniques remain in the cultural baggage past down over the years from a profiler to another and mainly in the circuit of USA Police Schools. The entire theoretical organization has been built on data bases that have never been published and offered to the analysis by the scientific international community and often they make reference to a small number of case studies to support the claim. Another criticism to the profiling techniques scientific reliability is therefore connected to the possible distortions that characterize the oral transfer of human thinking and to the scanty informations available and scientific falsification of the theoretical contents and the research experiences that dont circulate freely in the scientific international community but remain inside Investigative Police Departments. (d) Most offender profiles, realized from a psycodynamic point of view, underline emphatically the role of the various psychological functions (symbolic) that the homicidal act itself assumes for the offender. Depth psychology analysis of freudian origin on this kind of profiles doesnt provide immediate investigative cues and correlation between the evident behavior on the crime scene and the intrapsychic processes that are considered in order to explain or produce this kind of behavior. The profiles of psychodynamic origin provide just few informations about the offenders sociocultural characteristics, life-style and patterns of criminal behavior that are useful for the investigation. (e) The media spread of extemporary criminal profiles realized by criminologists that have never been on a crime scene and not based on forensic information, autopsy and laboratory reports and on preliminary Police reports, sheds shadows over the professionality of the entire category of profilers and doesnt possess any scientific basis, as substantiated by the entire specialistic literarure on the subject Maybe this kind of attitude can be attributed to the attempt of riding the wave of the success obtained with some famous movies (i.e.: The silence of the lambs) and to exploit common people fantasy in order to obtain some advantages in terms of personal and professional image. (f) The credibility attributed to magicians and psychics by some Police Department (Geberth 1996), raised by some literature and cinematography, has added some further elements of confusion between a methodology that tries to assume scientific accuracy and a world crowded with esoterism and impostors, as everybody knows.

But the main scientific debate at the moment deserves a special treatment about the type of logical approach (deductive or inductive) that is at the basis of the profilers investigative and psychological analysis. Deductive profiling The deductive profiling is focused on crime scene criminal behavior analysis and on victimology. This kind of analysis is based entirely on forensic evidences correlated with crime scene and victim in a specific case. The Criminal Profile is therefore deduced from a precise forensic examination and from a behavioral reconstruction of the entire criminal event. From the combination of these two types of characteristics a profiler can deduce the identifying elements of the offender that most likely has commited a specific crime, with a specific victim, under the distinctive conditions that characterize that particular crime scene. This process deals with both forensic and behavioral components. A famous example of this type of profiling is the Behaviour Evidence Analysis (Turvey, 1997) and its success depends on analysts skill to identify criminal action (mechanical) clues and behavioral (dynamics) patterns of an unknown offender in order to infer the real meaning. The offenders emotions during the perpetration of the criminal act, the individual behavioral schemes and his personality patterns can be then deduced only from that unique criminal behavior on crime scene together with victimology (Douglas, Munn, 1992). The criticisms to deductive profiling model underline the fact that deductive profilers inferences about crime scene behavior produce conclusions out of thin air. Rarely profilers deductive opinions about what may have happened at a crime scene are theoretically or empirically driven by research activity and hypothesis testing but, in most cases, they are based on the application of personal experiences, based on a small number of cases (often closed confidential information) and on personal feelings. (Godwin 2001). Deductive profiling only considers available informations that are part of personal experiences baggage of a profiler, ranging from the general (passed down informations) to the specific (case). The strength of deductive profiling method is that if premises are true and if the profilers hypotheses are valid, then the conclusion are also true. Unfortunately this is hardly the case.

International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology Volume:48 Issue:4 Dated:August 2004 Pages:495 to 503

The main weak points of deductive logic applied to criminal profiling are the following: (A) differences in behavioral responses: even if the social and educational influences often orientate human behavior in a similar way, every human being is unlike the others and, even in similar conditions, sometimes he provides different behavioral responses. In fact personality and past experiences interfere in a different and (sometimes) intermittent way and are always mediated by human mind that gives meaning to reality. Moreover some contextual factors can interfere on behavior by forcing a subject to commit acts that he wouldnt be prone to from a character point of view. For that reason a crime scene can present some elements that dont match with the offenders personality and to the thinking logic supposed by a profiler. (B) the presence of contingent situations: deductive profiling techniques are relatively successful if crime scene actually reflects offenders personality; in other words, if there have not been contingent situations that forced the offender to act in a different manner from the way he would have acted if those situations didnt occur. For example, a victims particular reaction, before or during an attack can influence offenders behavior, the nature and the quality of the evidences left and the general aspect of a crime scene. This includes provocation or self-defence reactions such as struggling, wrestling or running away that can alter both the offenders patterns of behavior and evidences left on crime scene and deeply modify the crime scene as it appears to a profilers eyes. (c) crime scene alterations: some classical crime scene alterations can influence the nature and the quality of the evidences left at crime scene and their general condition (Chisum, Turvey, 2000). This could include: 1. an aggressors precautionary measures before, during and after an assault that are deliberately carried out in order to confuse, to disorient or to mislead investigations and to hide his identity or his crime; 2. misleading, when some clues are inserted on or removed from a crime scene in order to distract suspicion from the real perpetrator; misleading is about adding , removing or manipulating objects at crime scene in order to mask 3.

4. 5.

the criminal apparent motive. In some homicide cases, for example, suicide, natural death or fatality can be staged. secondary transfer, that makes references to the exchange of evidences between objects and persons, not connected to those circumstances that produced the original (first) exchange (dynamics is tied even to accidental motives) evidences deterioration by operators present at crime scene that unawarely can alter the setting. contextual factors as climate, animal predation, etc.

Inductive profiling Inductive profiling reasoning ranges from the specific (case) to the general. For example, this kind of profiling derives general psychological principles about offenders behavior by empirically examining and statistically testing particular facts or events of a certain amount of solved cases. In contrast to deductive process, that is from general to specific and starts with assumptions about behavior, inductive profiling relies on criminal behavior model based on data gathered previously from the crime scenes, police reports, autopsy and laboratory reports, victimology reports and psychological evaluations in order to be empirically analyzed (and usually inserted into a database) (Godwin 2001). Briefly, an Inductive Criminal Profile is about a single offender and some of his/her behavioral and demographic characteristics shared with other known offenders already observed in the past. Inductive Criminal Profiling is generally the result of a kind of reasoning that involves coding data collected for statistical analysis in which the results are supported with theories. In order to try to hypothesize the way of thinking of an unknown offender of a given crime and to understand if signs provided by crime scene are congruent or not, in effect to ask oneself simply what would I have done in his/her shoes? could be very useful in order to get near (at least in part) to what really happened. Then the success of some inductive profiles would be connected to the fact that some thinking processes are similar in all human beings. In the target-oriented actions individuals generally try to obtain an advantage deriving from the action itself (symbolic or pragmaticutilitarian) and produce some logic reasoning patterns that allow them to achieve their

International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology Volume:48 Issue:4 Dated:August 2004 Pages:495 to 503

purpose. This kind of advantages can pertain a practical fact or a psychological gratification. In general they embrace both cases. At the same time, since we are analyzing criminal behavior, individuals tend (if possible) to avoid negative consequences (sanctions) deriving from their behavior. For that reason a crime scene may present, in a large number of cases, some characters corresponding to offenders personality and patterns of thinking that we hypothesized. The most weak points of traditional Inductive Criminal Profiling (not based on a neural network and on a large data base) are the following: 1. information usually make reference to small number of cases; 2. it is often about a series of representations obtained from the analysis of a small number of individuals that could have been sampled in a wrong way; 3. inductive profiles are derived from the analysis of a small number of known apprehended offenders; 4. an inductive Criminal Profile doesnt consider of offenders still free, often the most intelligent or resourceful, that manage to evade apprehension; 5. an inductive Criminal Profile (used as a sort of infallible resource of prediction) may produce some inaccuracies that, if taken for good by a superficial investigator, could compromise an innocent (Turvey 1998). Investigators main critiques towards the investigative utility of criminal profiling Within the investigative environments (mainly European) it can be noticed that there is an high scepticism about the utility of criminal profiling to support investigation. First of all, as George Palermo says, to making in the investigative field is highly risky because every offender is unique both regarding his behavioral patterns and personality traits. From this point of view, criminal profiling, though sometimes very useful, should be always considered as a working hypothesis and not as a solution (Palermo

2002). Actually profiling doesnt provide the specific identity of an unknown offender (without conventional investigations) and can not provide a telephone number or an address but it indicates the kind of person that most likely has committed a crime (Douglas, 1995). As said above, until now the use of this investigative tool has been applied only to violent crime or to particular types of repeated crimes commited by the same author (expecially sexual aggressions) that are statistically less relevant in the number of cases that an investigator will commonly treat during his career. The explanation of this kind of situation is simple: a serial murder or a violent sexual aggression are committed under the influence of particular motives or fantasies that keep on forcing into crime the offender and the clues (often similar) of these motives or fantasy can be probably found in the various cases that will present to the attention of investigators. Every year in a state such as Minnesota (USA) nearly 120-130 homicides take place (see table 1). The majority of this type of crimes are characterized by an acquaintance relationship between offender and victim and often happen in the family orbit, inside couples or gangs. This kind of events are probably unique in the criminal career of the offender and, except some extremely rare and particular situations, the investigator will not have a further chance for drawing the profile. In all these cases the linking techniques assume just a relative importance because they only provide eventual correlation with previous cases In practice, the more frequent criticism put forward by investigators to traditional profiling techniques consists in the fact that, in order to activate a successful analysis, it needs several criminal acts committed by the same author (in Canter and Godwins geographical profiling programs it takes at least 5 crime scenes to start the analysis)

Table 1: Homicidal motives in the State of Minnesota (USA) during 2002

International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology Volume:48 Issue:4 Dated:August 2004 Pages:495 to 503

Minnesota State - Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, Criminal Justice Information System 2002

The project NNPCP Il NNPCP (Neural Network for Psychological Criminal Profiling) is focused on a neural network applied to violent crime analysis, mainly of psychopathological origin. But this kind of system can find valid application even in other forms of crime as the ones connected to psychological disorders as paedophilia and pyromania. The idea of applying artificial intelligence and data mining technology to violent crime analysis, mainly of psychopathological origin, arises from the attempt to overcome conventional profiling techniques intrinsic limits and to apply even in sole homicide case investigations clinical psychological analysis information technologies that can be useful to investigators. In the research project started in 2002 with the preliminary exploratory inquiries and coordinated by an Italian State Police Psychologist and Criminologist, there are three international multidisciplinary equipes (Italy, UK, and USA ) with different expertise that work together in synergy. The equipes are developing the NNPCP software and applicative philosophy. The elaboration system is based on a neural network and an evolved data mining program that are filled with data about various type of homicides and relative patterns of motivations. The information is from crime scene analysis, victimology, forensic and autopsy reports, preliminary Police Reports, a structured

criminological interview and from a battery of psychodiagnostic tests administered by a professional trained Psychologist-Criminologist to the offender apprehended for that crime. The output of the system (the investigative informations) is represented by 24 investigative areas and 200 specific informations that, in practice, delineate the psychological, psychopathological and motivational offenders profile. The NNPCP outputs (200) of the program have been determined in part through the study of international literature on the subject and, on the other side, some of the NNPCP outputs are the result of an empirical research (a brief questionnaire was administered to an international sample of investigators that deal with homicide cases; the investigators interviewed had to point out a series of information that, in their opinion, are useful to identify rapidly an unknown offender in an homicide case) The administration of the questionnaire is still in progress in order to acquire any new elements to insert into the system. Conclusions The information provided by artificial intelligence NNPCP program should support the investigator

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to narrow the field of possible suspects during the early phase of the investigation both on the strength of homicidal motivation and psychological, biographical, socio-cultural and behavioral characteristics. This tool should allow to focus the attention on one or more suspects during the late phase of the investigation that can present some psychological or psychopathological characteristics compatible with the criminal act investigated. The advantages of Psychological Criminal Profiling model based on neural network and data mining are several. First of all, in this way there is no necessity of the presence of a professional trained profile in every violent crime scene and the investigative team can have immediately some suggestions of psychological and psychopathological area. This tool is pretty easy to use and there is no need of psychological and psychopathological specialistic knowledge and is applicable by every crime scene investigator with a professional training. Moreover, the general profiler can be generated very quickly and can be elaborated by a laptop during the first crime scene inspection or downloaded from a specific web site connected with the neural network. However it is of great importance the broad and constant input of data into the NNPCP system that makes it more and more precise and statistically efficient by reducing its margins for errors. References 1. Burgess A., Douglas J., Ressler R., Sexual Homicide: Patterns and Motives, Lexington Books, 1988 2. Burgess, A. Douglas, J. D'Agostino, R. Hartman, C., Ressler, R., Sexual Killers and Their Victims: Identifying Patterns Through Crime Scene Analysis, Journal of Interpersonal Violence, Vol. 1, No.3, Sept. 1986, pp.288-308. 3. Burgess, A. Douglas, J. Hartman, C., McCormack, A. Ressler, R., Sexual Homicide: A Motivational Model, Journal of Interpersonal Violence, Vol. 1, No.3, Sept. 1986, pp.251-272. 4. Canter D., Larkin P., The evinromental range of serial rapist, Journal of evinronmental Psychology, n 13, pp 6369, 1993; 5. Chisum W. J., Turvey B., Evidence Dynamics: Locard's Exchange Principle & Crime Reconstruction, Journal of Behavioral Profiling, vol 1, 2000; 6. De Burger, J., & Holmes, R., Serial Murder, Sage Publications, 1988

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Authors Marco Strano, an Italian State Police Psychologist on active service; he operates in numerous research activities for the Catholic University of Rome and other important Italian Universities; his international membership are with the American Society of Criminology (A.S.C.), the American Psychological Association (A.P.A.) and the New York Academy of Sciences (N.Y.A.S.). web sites: www.criminologia.org