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Criminal Profiling as a Plotting

Activity Based on Abductive
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Article in International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative

Criminology · July 2009
DOI: 10.1177/0306624X09339175 · Source: PubMed

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Int J Offender Ther Comp Criminol OnlineFirst, published on June 26, 2009 as doi:10.1177/0306624X09339175

International Journal of
Offender Therapy and
Comparative Criminology
Volume XX Number X

Criminal Profiling as a
Month XXXX xx-xx
© 2009 SAGE Publications
10.1177/0306624X09339175
Plotting Activity Based http://ijo.sagepub.com
hosted at
on Abductive Processes http://online.sagepub.com

Alfredo Verde
University of Genoa, Italy
Antonio Nurra
Licensed Psychologist, Genoa, Italy

In this article the authors analyze the nature and aims of criminal profiling from a
theoretical point of view. The need to become increasingly “scientific” has given rise
to the modern approaches of profiling, which have been particularly successful in cases
of serial homicides and sex crimes, given that compulsive (perverse) acts, because of
their ritual nature, have been described as being more easily foreseeable and presum-
ably linkable to the psychological and even personal characteristics of a given criminal.
On this basis, the authors analyze profiling from an epistemological point of view and
show how, in the concrete activity of profiling, profilers depart from the “certainty” of
the scientific models (those that are based on deductive–inductive processes); the epis-
temological basis of reasoning changes as there is no longer an induction–deduction
model but rather an abductive model (as conceived and explained by Peirce) in which
the importance of plotting (the weaving of a narrative) becomes greater.

Keywords:  criminal profiling; epistemology; Peircean abduction; plotting

Psychological Profiling as an Attempt

to Make Police Investigations “Scientific”

Various terms have been used to define what is now commonly called criminal
profiling. The first pioneering experiences date back to the 1950s and were chiefly
conducted by clinicians with psychiatric training and a psychoanalytical background
(the phase defined as “diagnostic evaluations” by Wilson, Lincoln, & Kocsis, 1997).
Since the end of the 1960s, police forces themselves worked out a new way of for-
mulating hypotheses on the personal features, character, and psychopathology of
criminals. Indeed, it is well known how the FBI developed the theory of crime scene
analysis (CSA; Kocsis & Palermo, 2006), which was based on the construction of

Authors’ Note: Please address correspondence to Alfredo Verde, University of Genoa, DIMEL–Sezione
di Criminologia e Psichiatria Forense, Via de Toni 12, Genoa 16132, Italy; e-mail: alverde@tin.it.

1
2   International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology

databases that connected the characteristics of crime scenes with those of criminals;
the characteristics of actual crime scenes could then be compared with those
recorded in the database to trace the profile of the unknown criminal.
Profiling first came to the attention of the general public through mass media
coverage of serial crimes, especially serial murders. Subsequently, it returned, so to
speak, to the academic and scientific sphere, where it was subjected to psychological–
statistical analysis. In this regard, the dispute between the advocate of investigative
psychology (IP), David Canter, and the FBI profilers (Wilson et al., 1997) is
renowned: Canter accused the FBI profilers of adopting methodologies that were not
empirically validated and scientifically reliable (and therefore falsifiable) to draw up
data on the crime on the basis of the crime scene. Current opinion is that profiling
has gradually shifted from a nonscientific to a scientific approach as a result of the
influx of academic psychologists (Hicks & Sales, 2006).
This article does not aim to discuss why, after developing in silence, as it were,
in the 1970s and 1980s, profiling gained worldwide media attention in the early
1990s. The monster, as depicted in several popular films and television series, the
unknown perpetrator of serial crimes that fall outside the common categories
observed by criminology, soon captured the public’s attention; in the mind of the
public, he became a symbol of evil, a representation of the growing insecurity of the
society of “liquid fear” (Bauman, 2006; Jenkins, 1994; Picart & Greek, 2003), and
almost simultaneously rose the image of his hunter, the profiler.
But how does profiling work? How can the profiler reconstruct the personality and
demographic features of the criminal on the basis of the crime scene? After a brief
review of the (very limited) success of profiling practices, this article examines criminal
profiling from the point of view of its epistemological foundation and the reasoning
processes of the profiler, with particular regard to Charles Sanders Peirce’s theory of
scientific reasoning. In the last section, an attempt is made to define profiling as a nar-
rative construction based on clues and more or less founded on empirical data.

The (Limited) Success of Profiling

Profiling has its beginnings in the works of Arthur Conan Doyle, who depicted it
as the result of the detective’s particular logic ability, innate in origin and amateur in
nature. It was subsequently proposed as a method of scientific research via the con-
struction of theories and methods that work out the relationships between criminal
acts and the behavioral features of those who commit them, through the formulation
of hypotheses that can be proved or disproved (Holmes & De Burger, 1988).
Particular concepts have been formulated from this point of view: The modus
operandi (MO) of the criminal, comprising all of the actions carried out by the
offender in committing the crime, will be deduced from the crime scene, a behavior
that is learnt, dynamic, and continuously evolving (Douglas, Ressler, Burgess, &
 Verde, Nurra / Criminal Profiling   3

Hartman, 1986; Turco, 1990; Turvey, 1999). The importance of analyzing the MO
lies in linkage; another important aspect in analyzing the MO is staging, that is to
say, alterations made to the scene of the crime by the offender in an attempt to mis-
lead investigators. Moreover, a relevant concept is that of the signature, meaning
those elements present at the scene that are not inherent in the crime itself but that
can say a great deal about the offender’s personality (Douglas et al., 1986). In this
regard, the possibility of inferring the hallmark features of any sexual perversion on
the part of the offender is of particular interest: Particular importance has been
attached to the interpretative hypothesis that looks to connect the aspect of signature
with the characteristics of such perverse fantasies, and therefore to infer the latter
from the former.
However, in the literature there is some disagreement as to which crimes are best
suited to profiling practices (for a detailed analysis, see Crabbé, Decoene, &
Vertommen, 2008): inexplicable crimes, or crime scenes in which “mad” or psycho-
pathological elements can be postulated (Holmes & Holmes, 1996), or serial crimes
(Douglas et al., 1986), which should enable linkage analysis to be performed.
Violent and serial crimes of an aggressive and sexual nature should therefore be best
suited to such practices. By contrast, IP states that other crimes, such as theft and
burglary, are also amenable to profiling (Canter, 2004).
Another well-known characteristic of crimes suited to profiling is their sexual
nature. Apart from rape, which is sexual by definition, the sexual motive is also
thought to play a major role in homicide (Meloy, 2000). In this regard, Prentky et al.
(1989) found that 86% of serial sex murderers had fantasies of sexual violence and
murder, as against only 23% of non–serial sex murderers. What constitutes a sexual
behavior however needs to be defined: It is clear that adopting a psychoanalytical
matrix (as the FBI operatives probably do) leads us to define every serial homicide
as sexual (Ressler, Burgess, & Douglas, 1988), whereas the adoption of a more
behavioral, or behavioristic, definition will reduce the number of murders defined in
this way. Indeed, there is divergence between IP and CSA with respect to this dimen-
sion. Canter (1994) stresses the killer’s need to control and to subjugate the victim,
rather than the sexual motive in the strict sense. Egger (1998) also emphasizes the
need to control, which can easily transform rape into murder. These positions can,
however, be reconciled if we consider Muller’s (2000) assertion that “a more current
view of both serial murder and serial rape is that it is not about sexual gratification
per se but rather about the exercise of power and control over the victim,” and that
the definition of sexual “might be interpreted in the context of the killer’s attempt to
sexually control and dominate his victim” (pp. 244-245).
What emerges from the above is that serial crime of a sexual nature (in the sense
defined above) appears to be particularly suited to profiling, in that it often involves
acting out perverse sexual fantasies, which are characterized by their immutability.
In other words, in such cases the intersituational constancy of action (the definition
and use of this term will be seen later) can be classed as high.
4   International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology

Notwithstanding all the debates mentioned above, very few authors enter into any
detail regarding the concrete nature of the profilers’ activity, or explain how investi-
gators can move from the analysis of the crime scene to the construction of a profile.
Turvey (1999) gives us one of the best known descriptions, which is more detailed
than that provided by Douglas et al. (1986). According to Turvey, studying the
physical elements of the crime scene (the position of the corpse, autopsy data, blood-
stains, etc.) enables the offender’s behavior to be reconstructed and constitutes a
simple narrative mode that uses the logic and precision of the empirical sciences; it
is from such “certainties” that he labels his version of profiling as deductive profil-
ing. The next step, which connects the features of the crime scene with the criminal’s
personal data (height, age, sex, marital status, occupation, etc.), depends on the
nature and efficacy of the database constructed by profilers. Finally, the modus
operandi and signature enable inferences to be made, on the basis of criminological,
psychological, and psychiatric knowledge, as to the personality of the offender and
the presence of any mental illnesses.
In their attempt to define the process of profiling, Pinizzotto and Finkel (1990)—
the first scholars to undertake empirical research into the ability of profilers—called
it an inferential process, which they summarized in five stages: assessment of the
type of criminal act (tracing it to the behavior of known perpetrators of similar acts),
detailed analysis of the crime scene, study of the victim and her or his environment,
and of suspects, and study of the possible motives of each suspect; a profile is then
drawn up. According to these authors, the activity of criminal profiling stems from
the what, passes to the why, and ends with the who inference. However, according
to Alison, Bennell, Mokros, and Ormerod (2002), “this practice is problematic
because it is not clear how a profiler moves from one point to the next (i.e., what
rules of thumb connect each inferential leap). . . . Moreover, profilers commonly do
not specify which (if any) behavioral, correlational, or psychological principles they
rely on” (p. 120).
Indeed, the possibility of inferring the characteristics of the person on the basis
of the crime scene has been called into question by research, which reports high rates
of error. According to Alison et al., the main obstacle to accurate profiling, and
which would account for the low success rates of profilers, is the erroneous theoriza-
tion that the personality is made up of a set of permanent traits characterized by a
high degree of intersituational constancy. However, the psychology of personality
has long since discounted this view, starting from the contribution by Mischel (cf.
Mischel, 1990; Wright & Mischel, 1987), and has shown that behavior depends both
on the characteristics of the individual and on the environmental situation. What is
therefore missing is the behavioral constancy of the subject’s characteristics from
one situation to another, a consideration that has prompted several scholars to ques-
tion the very notion of personality.
Notwithstanding such limits, existing studies show that there is a good chance of
predicting the traits linked to personality disorders on the basis of the characteristics
 Verde, Nurra / Criminal Profiling   5

of crimes of sexual violence; in this sense, we could speak of psychological profil-

ing, or rather psychopathological profiling (cf., e.g., Proulx, St-Yves, Guay, &
Ouimet, 1999). Alison et al. (2002), however, object that “many profilers make
inferences about characteristics that are not appropriate for a psychological defini-
tion of traits. Rather, profilers include features such as the offender’s age, gender,
ethnicity, marital status, degree of sexual maturity, and likely reaction to police
questioning” (p. 121). In a recent study by Mokros and Alison (2002), for instance,
it was not possible to correlate age, sociodemographic features, or criminal records
with the behavior of 50 English rapists at the crime scene. Alison et al. (2002) there-
fore conclude that “the notion that particular configurations of demographic features
can be predicted from an assessment of particular configurations of specific behav-
iors occurring in short-term, highly traumatic situations seems an overly ambitious
and unlikely possibility” (p. 132).
Notwithstanding the celebrity of the most famous profilers, and the use (and
abuse) of profile-related themes in fiction, TV serials, and movies, the success of
profiling remains to be proved. Almost all the research done on the validity of
profiling has revealed limited efficacy, both in comparative studies (i.e., studies
comparing the validity of profiles constructed by professional profilers with those
constructed by members of other categories) and in absolute terms. In studies
comparing profiling performed by profilers with profiling performed by other
categories (Kocsis, 2004; Kocsis, Middledorp, & Try, 2005; Kocsis, Irwin, Hayes,
& Nunn, 2000; Pinizzotto & Finkel, 1990), profilers performed just slightly better
than other categories (common investigators, untrained students, psychologists, or
even psychics), according to the meta-analysis performed by Snook, Eastwood,
Gendreau, Goggin, and Cullen (2007), who conclude that better performance does
not mean expert performance: “We contend that, in any field, an ‘expert’ should
decisively outperform nonexperts (i.e., lay persons)” (p. 447). Notwithstanding a
considerable debate on the results of such research between their principal author,
Richard Kocsis, and the authors of the meta-analyses (Bennell, Jones, Taylor, &
Snook, 2006; Kocsis, 2006; Kocsis, Middledorp, & Karpin, 2008), such findings
have been defined from the same Kocsis as merely “encouraging” (Kocsis &
Palermo, 2006, p. 330).
In absolute terms, the situation is even worse: An evaluation by Hicks and Sales
(2006) of the results of FBI profiling shows that profiling was used in 192 cases, of
which only 88 were solved; moreover, in those 88 cases, profiling was able to iden-
tify the offender only 17% of the time. Hicks and Sales conclude that “profiling was
successful in approximately 8% of the cases in which it was used” (p. 69). A review
on the research on profiling conducted by Eastwood, Cullen, Cavanagh, and Snook
(2006) concludes that “empirical evidence does not support the scientific validity of
profilers’ predictive abilities” (p. 122); another review, conducted by Snook, Cullen,
Bennell, Taylor, and Gendreau (2008), defines profiling as an “illusion,” given that
“the field lacks theoretical grounding and empirical support” (p. 1270). At this point,
6   International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology

given the limited success of profiling, one has to explain why it works so poorly. To
do so, a long digression about its scientific foundations is necessary.

The Epistemological Characteristics of Profiling

The epistemological characteristics of profiling have been discussed in the litera-

ture, though not exhaustively: Some types of profiling have been described as unsci-
entific, or more or less close to science; others, such as the IP model, have simply been
deemed scientific even though they are fraught with unscientific elements (Hicks &
Sales, 2006). Muller (2000), for instance, subjected the CSA and IP approaches to
epistemological verification according to the theories of Kuhn and Popper and found
that only the IP model possessed a reference paradigm according to Kuhn (1970) and
produced disprovable conclusions (Popper, 1959), unlike the approach adopted by the
FBI. In other words, the FBI investigators were judged to hark back to the psychiatrists
and psychoanalysts from whom they had tried to distance themselves through their
attempts to formalize their empirical intuitions. An example of this theoretical formal-
ization, which has not been sufficiently validated empirically, would be the well-
known distinction between nonorganized asocial and organized nonsocial with
reference to serial killers.
In this perspective, those models that make use of the inductive statistical method
and are based on the availability of a control group are defined as scientific (Hicks &
Sales, 2006). From this point of view, clinical methods are relegated to the limbo of
the unscientific. In our opinion, however, this is a grave mistake—in the first place,
because the FBI’s “artistic” and clinical methods are in reality also based on empirical
knowledge (albeit of a particular nature), and second because even scientific methods
are based on generalizations that can only be defined as clinical or rather abductive,
as we shall see later. Moreover, the fact that statistical predictions do not seem to be
very superior to clinical predictions or to those that are comparable to clinical predic-
tions, even those made by nonspecialists (Bennell, Taylor, & Snook, 2007), and that
predictions made by professional profilers are little better than those made by stu-
dents shows that the problem needs to be tackled from another standpoint.
Just how far these approaches criticize the moment of intuition is a question that
deserves close attention, because such a moment signals the emergence of a new
idea, which may be either general (thus giving rise to a scientific theory) or particu-
lar (thus giving rise to a theory concerning the characteristics of a given criminal).
Here, importance is assumed by the study of creative processes. As has already been
mentioned, some have attempted to solve the problem by postulating that two dis-
tinct forms of profiling exist, based on differing reasoning processes (inductive or
deductive) that it is claimed can be used by the expert to draw up a profile. For
instance, Turvey (1999) proposes a method, which he defines as deductive, in which
certain conclusions are based on certain premises and are drawn up by starting from
 Verde, Nurra / Criminal Profiling   7

the forensic sciences (his technique is called behavior evidence analysis [BEA]).
According to Turvey, the inductive method is characterized by statistical uncertainty,
whereas the deductive method is certain, in that deductive procedures yield certain
conclusions, given that the premises are certain. The problem is that Turvey himself
states that for what concerns the criminal’s psychological characteristics that can be
deduced from the crime scene, the detective or profiler must make use of intuition
and experience.
According to Kocsis and Palermo, the distinction between inductive profiling and
deductive profiling is based on mere philosophical concepts that do not grasp the
complexity, above and beyond induction and deduction, of the human mind, which
does not function in a discrete manner. Kocsis and Palermo (2006) therefore claim
that “the brain itself, as a complex and highly active neuronal synaptic system, may
subconsciously process diverse and/or intrusive thoughts that may increase the diffi-
culty of full engagement in one or the other method. If the cognitive processes of the
mind are incapable of engaging in this fashion, the suggestion of a method of profil-
ing premised on the issue of one form of reasoning to the exclusion of the other is
rendered highly problematic” (pp. 336-337). In reality, these authors are right when
it comes to evaluating what happens in the mind of an individual practitioner, but not
when it is a question of reflecting on a scientific method. As we shall see, scientific-
ness can be a flag around which researchers rally to validate their practices, which
may well be based on statistics and inductive–deductive reasoning, while neverthe-
less making another leap, which we shall try to describe and define. Obviously, this
involves trying to understand the workings of the activity that Holmes and Holmes
(2002) call an art; Palermo also agrees, at the same time asserting with Kocsis that
“however, it must strive to become a science” (Kocsis & Palermo, 2006, p. 339).
As is widely known, these issues became truly concrete when the FBI profilers,
who were experts in linkage, began to be called on to attribute further homicides to
murderers for whom proof of a previous homicide had already been acquired, to
obtain the death penalty for these individuals. The problem was therefore tackled by
jurists who were experts in the rules of evidence, and in particular by Risinger and
Loop (2002). The argument put forward by Risinger and Loop is extremely impor-
tant, in that it deals both with errors of logic and with the manipulations of meaning
that take place particularly in operations of linkage. In such cases, if the profile
is constructed a posteriori and serves to connect a murder committed by a known
murderer with one committed by an unknown murderer, the post hoc propter hoc
nature of the profiler’s activity is evident. Indeed, in such cases, the variables may
be “generalized and repackaged as generally the same though they are specifically
clearly different in perhaps important detail” (Risinger & Loop, 2002, p. 208). On
the basis of the assertions of the above-mentioned authors, it is clear that in these
cases the procedure is no longer inductive. Indeed, the authors themselves urge that
evidence gathering of this type should turn linkage into a practice of profiling in the
strict sense; that is to say, the witness should first be presented with a crime (that
8   International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology

committed by a known criminal); then, a list of characteristics peculiar to that crime

(features of the modus operandi or signature) should be drawn up, obviously through
an inductive procedure, and then the second crime should be compared with the
characteristics of the first. Otherwise, one is likely to fall into rhetorical illusions,
and the similar characteristics of the different cases could be produced through dis-
tortions and accomodations of the meaning of some given element of the crimes
(here, of course, it is a question of nominal variables).
Incidentally, distortions of this kind are, as we shall see, typical of the abductive
procedure. But our aim goes beyond that: It is to show that the abductive procedure
actually concerns the whole activity of profiling and that the construction of a pro-
file corresponds more to the need to harmonize data (including statistical data) in a
narrative-type context than to inductive–deductive activities in the strict sense.
However, it should again be repeated that this article deals only with the concrete
activity of profiling and not with its empirical validations.

Abductive Processes and Profiling

Our intention is to critically analyze the theoretical basis of psychological profil-

ing and to highlight the main problems that need to be taken into account when a
behavioral pattern inferred from the crime scene is used to reconstruct the figure of
an unknown criminal and his sociopsychological features.
As we shall see, we shall define the activity of practitioners as intrinsically abduc-
tive, given that it involves examining numerous clues and from them constructing
several demographic features and personality traits. By contrast, academic, scientific
profiling can more easily rely on the inductive–deductive nature of formalized sci-
ence, and consequently of statistical tools. In the former case, the practitioner’s
reconstruction will be similar to that kind of research called idiographic, as opposed
to nomothetic; but we must stress that the conclusions of profilers, even when they
are based on a large amount of empirical research, always remain hypothetical (i.e.,
abductive), given that they concern a single, particular figure (the man with “those”
particular characteristics).
Although the profiling of practitioners may make use of different research meth-
ods, it is above all an amateur activity and as such idiographic in character (Holmes
& Holmes, 1996). It cannot be carried out on the assembly line, so to speak, but
rather must remain a handmade product. Even when its reasoning starts from nomo-
thetic standpoints, the assembly and interconnection of the variables becomes idio-
graphic: in other words, we pass from a pile of particular, singular data expressed in
statistical, hypothetical terms to a plot, interwoven and connected by syntax and
responding to the laws of narrative construction.
Commonly, science is supposed to be based on the Aristotelian–Galilean scien-
tific method, as developed by Bacon (this is, at bottom, the myth of scientificness
 Verde, Nurra / Criminal Profiling   9

that is pursued by the profilers). However, for the reasons given above, this method
is difficult to apply to profiling; indeed, to prop up the paradigm, it seems appropri-
ate to broaden it to the concept of abduction, a category drawn up by Peirce
(1931/1960): an inference through which the investigator perceives relationships
between facts by picking out causal links and/or analogies and hypothesizes the
developments of a situation. It is also defined in the literature as conjecture, retro-
duction, or hypothetical inference. This procedure enables explanations to be worked
out; it does not, however, yield sure, necessary findings but rather possible or more
or less probable ones. It is therefore never possible to work out the causes and con-
sequences of a given situation with certainty. The fact that abduction stands at the
core of every police investigative procedure is not yet widely recognized, even if the
most acute scholars have reached such conclusion (Innes, 2007).
It is necessary at this point to spend some time defining more precisely what
Peirce meant by abduction. This task is, however, complicated by the fact that during
his production, Peirce adopted two different definitions of it. The first definition
considers abduction to be a logical process of inference that is separate and distinct
from those of induction and deduction; the second, and later, definition saw abduc-
tion as the construction of hypotheses, which would then be verified through the
known inductive–deductive procedures. Let us look at the first definition, which is
based on the Aristotelian framework of the syllogism: in “Deduction, Induction,
Hypothesis,” in which Peirce still defines abduction as hypothesis, induction is the
inference of the rule (major premise) from the case (minor premise) and result (con-
clusion), whereas hypothesis is the inference of a case from a rule and a result. The
following example shows the relationships more clearly:

Deduction: Rule—All the beans from this bag are white

Case—These beans are from this bag
Result—These beans are white
Induction: Case—These beans are from this bag
Result—These beans are white
Rule—All the beans from this bag are white
Hypothesis: Rule—All the beans from this bag are white
Result—These beans are white
Case—These beans are from this bag (Peirce, 1931/1960, p. 2.623)

After 1891 Peirce widens the concept of inference to methodological processes:

From this point of view, abduction becomes the formulation of a new hypothesis,
and deduction and induction the ways in which this hypothesis can be verified.
The three kinds of reasoning become interlinked in the production and verification
of new scientific knowledge and are conceptualized as the three stages of inquiry:
“Abduction is the process of forming an explanatory hypothesis. It is the only
logical operation which introduces any new ideas; for induction does nothing but
determine a value, and deduction merely evolves the necessary consequences of a
10   International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology

pure hypothesis” (Peirce, 1931/1960, p. 5.171). This is what happens in the case
of IP and of the drawing up of general characteristics of criminals based on
empirical research.
But as we shall see, abductive inference is always intuitive–analogical in nature:
We will show that even in the most accredited practices, it always remains a part of
the process (given its intrinsically idiographic nature), which stems purely from
unproven abductions.
Now, we shall try to make a hypothetical example regarding the field of profiling
practices by using the concepts outlined and described above; that is to say, we shall
try to define profiling from the point of view of the nature of the inferential processes
it implies. Abductive reasoning, albeit logically correct, yields conclusions that are
only possible. We shall use as an example the case of an unknown (hypothetical) serial
murderer whose traces have been left at two crime scenes. In this kind of reasoning,
truth and validity have to be distinguished; truth is the adherence of the assertions to
reality, whereas validity concerns the formal correctness and the logical necessity of
the conclusions with respect to the premises, regardless of their content. We shall argue
that abductive reasoning can be valid, but that its truth has to be proved.
Another point has to be addressed; in the study of personality, the need to use
abductions follows from the unproven constancy of human behavior. To claim that
given a certain behavioral pattern deduced from the crime scene, the psychological
profile of the criminal can be inferred accurately (this is the myth of Baconian origin),
it must be assumed, as we have argued above, that there exists absolute constancy in
behavior. The offender should therefore display constant patterns of behavior that are
not influenced by situational factors, that can be recorded by means of empirical obser-
vation (induction), and that can lead to the formulation of a general law from which to
deduce the concrete characteristics of those offenders who display the features studied.
As revealed by a study conducted by Gulotta and Puddu (1995), what we would have
here is an inference of a deductive nature. Deduction is a process that enables sure
conclusions regarding specific cases to be derived from general knowledge.
In the case of deduction, at least one of the premises must be universal. But this kind
of reasoning already belongs to the realm of abduction! The result is a conclusion that
is kept as necessary: An individual with an authoritarian personality, for instance,
should behave in an equally authoritarian manner in every moment of his life. In prac-
tice, absolute constancy concerns the intersituational stability of the personality (Krahè,
1992; Mischel, 1990), but it follows from an undue generalization. Thus, according to
this (falsely) deductive method, if the criminal has displayed a certain behavioral
pattern in committing the crime, then he surely has a certain personality, is surely
affected by a certain pathology, surely has certain sociodemographic features, etc.
Some methods of criminal profiling currently in use involve the creation of a
database containing the psychosociological profiles of past offenders. This approach
feeds a general theory that is made up of assertions that will be used as the premises
for deductive inferences. It should, however, be borne in mind that the basis of the
 Verde, Nurra / Criminal Profiling   11

theory has in reality been constructed by means of numerous inductions from expe-
rience, which, by definition, are probabilistic and not certain. In reality therefore the
theory is not generalizable, and if it is, it is only for comparable samples; however,
for single individuals, it can become generalizable only via an act of faith or, in other
words, a creative act. The attempts to apply Bayesian inference methods to profiling
(Baumgartner, Ferrari, & Palermo, 2008; Baumgartner, Ferrari, & Salfati, 2005)
stem from this unsatisfactory point.
The first premises used by the profiler to determine the sociopsychological profile
of the offender, as will be seen in detail below, are not certain but probable. Inductive
reasoning leads to the inference of a range of particulars—a psychological profile of
the known offender. The psychosociological profiles thus obtained are then recorded
in a database. A schematic representation of this method is shown below.

Induction = Probable
If the known offender has displayed the behavioral pattern X (factual data) at the crime
scene (Case)
And during interviews and the application of psychodiagnostic methods the known
offender has displayed the psychosociological profile A (demographic and clinical
data) (Result)
Then (only) offenders with the psychosociological profile A display the behavioral
pattern X at the crime scene (Rule)

The behavior pattern displayed by the unknown offender is compared with those
displayed by known offenders, and deductive inferences are made.

(False) Deduction = Certain?

If offenders with the psychosociological profile A display the behavioral pattern X at
the crime scene (Rule)
And the behavioral pattern X has been displayed at this crime scene (Case)
Then the unknown offender has the psychosociological profile A (Result)

This step, as outlined above, only apparently fits into a thought process of an
inductive–deductive nature; in reality, it is based on abduction. Moreover, this argu-
ment relies heavily on the definitions given, which refer to the complex system of
significances proper to every language.
We have ascertained that even in the case of the use of statistics, the conclusions
yielded by profiling are subject to a degree of uncertainty. We can explain such
uncertainty by substituting the concept of abduction for that of deduction.

Abduction = Possible
If the behavioral pattern X has been displayed in the present crime (Result)
And many known killers with the psychosociological profile A have displayed the
behavioral pattern X in the past (Rule)
12   International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology

Then it is possible that an unknown killer with the same psychosociological profile A
as the known killers may have committed the present crime (Case)

As explained previously, to claim that a certain behavioral pattern exhibited at the

crime scene enables us to infer the psychological profile of the offender accurately
is tantamount to endorsing the concept of absolute constancy in behavior. A more
satisfactory thesis is that of coherence. This is a conceptualization that incorporates
both the importance of personal disposition and the variable sensitivity of individual
behavior to situational influences and to interaction with the victim. Here, there is a
clear need for psychological skills on the part of the profiler, who should be able to
“read between the lines” to pick out both the behavioral constants common to the
various crimes and the differences determined by environmental and motivational
factors (a certain degree of formalization of this problem has been developed by IP).
The interactionist conception of constancy assumes that the behavior of an individ-
ual will be fairly constant in a variety of situations, as it is the expression of the
personal qualities and cognitive activities of that individual. It is essential that both
stability and change in behavior be taken into account, provided that they follow a
systematic pattern and are therefore separately predictable. Such information is not,
however, available to the profiler, because the subject whose behavior is being stud-
ied cannot be observed; only the traces of his behavior can be recorded. This infor-
mation is therefore inferred from the behavioral pattern displayed. According to the
coherence approach, the apparently inductive–deductive inference outlined above
can be characterized as abduction, and its assumptions are clues.
Profiling is in this way characterized as a thought process involving an approach
that falls within the clue-based paradigm. Indeed, the investigator can only infer
causes from effects, as a method based on observation as opposed to experimenta-
tion. For this reason, it cannot give rise to general laws; rather, it can only lead from
a particular event to the particular cause of that event. The degree of arbitrariness or
logical contingency of the conclusions to which profiling will lead, on starting from
given premises, has to be evaluated in relation to all the premises underpinning that
inference, to the idiosyncratic and cultural tendency of the profiler to organize the
various elements into a narration, to the various cognitive biases to which the pro-
filer may be subject, and last but not least, to the distance between the conclusions
(profile data) and the root (factual data) of the chain of inferences.
Let us now look again at the premises that should be recorded in the preliminary
phase, referring for example to Turvey (1999): material traces, weapons used, position
and state of the body, results of autopsy examination, circumstances (time and place),
and personal history of the victim. The inferential process is developed from these first
premises and is characterized almost exclusively by concatenated abductions. The
conclusions of single abductions constitute the premises of other abductions.
In other words, the inductive–deductive approach would allow the profiler to say
only that in a particular situation, the traces at the crime scene are similar to some
 Verde, Nurra / Criminal Profiling   13

given percentage to those left by offenders with the same characteristics (i.e., belong
to categories constructed via observation of similar traces left by known offenders
with ascertained personal characteristics). This process could lead the pure inductive–
deductive profiler to construct a statistical profile, as sophisticated as possible (the
argument applies to every statistical procedure, given the fact that statistics is proba-
bilistic, and the degrees of correlation in the social sciences are almost always low,
whereas the unexplained variance is always high), in which the profiler says that “the
offender is male (given percentage [g.p.]), Caucasian (g.p.), married (g.p.), affected
by a given personality disorder (g.p), and so on.” In no case can the single charac-
teristics simply be added up to make a profile; the famous Australian case of the
“Granny Killer” shows how just one mistake can render the profile completely false
(Kennedy & Whittaker, 1992; Kocsis & Palermo, 2006).
Abduction follows: Abductive processes allow profilers (on the basis of their
experience, technical competence, art, or psychic attributes) to choose between the
percentages, to go beyond the percentages, and to arrive at a “certainty” that may be
surely valid but may well not be true. Given that the different sociodemographic and
personality characteristics to be inferred are many, abductive processes allow the
profiler to make another leap, another linkage among them, in order to construct a
character, a hypothetical person responsible for particular actions. In other words,
abduction allows the various elements collected to be preliminarily structured into a
coherent whole.
Scientists, epistemologists, and semioticians have variously classified abductions,
sometimes going beyond Peirce. Thus, it is possible to speak of an abduction con-
tinuum, which ranges from the most certain to the most uncertain forms of abduction.
The most uncertain form is surely creative abduction, that which, following the late
theorization of Peirce, brings in a new idea (rule) to explain a given result and derives
from it the case; this is precisely the phenomenon of scientific discovery (see, e.g.,
Hanson, 1958). The most certain is the form of abduction in which a given fact
(result) is subsumed under a general, already given theory (rule) and in which it is
certain that that theory will be the only one applicable to the situation, and that it will
yield the conclusion (case). Note that in this case, the formula can be reversed and
presented (almost) as a deduction (Bonfantini & Proni, 1983). It is from the similarity
between deduction and the lowest form of abduction that confusion arises. Some, like
Turvey, apply the term deductive profiling to an activity that is abductive in itself,
even if it adopts measures belonging to the “exact” disciplines and in this sense pre-
tends to be “true.” But other forms of abduction are not so certain and introduce ele-
ments that, as Peirce says, can be valid but (sometimes) not true, or not entirely true.
The first is what Magnani (2001) calls selective abduction, in which one has to
choose which of several theories (rules) will best explain the result observed. Eco
(1983) calls the near-deductive, above-mentioned abduction hypercodified, and this
latter kind of reasoning hypocodified abduction. The example that can be given is that
of diagnosis in medicine, in which the physician goes from a symptom (result) to a
14   International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology

diagnosis (rule) that can be applied to a particular patient (case). Magnani (2001)
shows how, from the rule (the illness chosen), another symptom can be inferred, and
from this further abduction its presence can be verified in the patient. But another, still
more uncertain, form of abduction exists, in which a new scientific hypothesis is built
ex novo. This is called by both Magnani and Eco, as we have seen, creative abduc-
tion, and in Peirce’s (later) theorization is the first step of all scientific research, which
has to be confirmed via deductive–inductive processes.
However, as Eco (1983) says, creative abductions can be formulated even without
generalization, if we speak of (inferred) behaviors or characteristics of single cases
or situations. In this regard, Eco speaks of abductions and meta-abductions, which
take as their first step (result) the last step (case) of a former abduction; as an
example of such abductions, he quotes the activities of detectives (and, we could
add, of profilers). Let us consider the activities of Sherlock Holmes. In the stories,
Holmes uses the word deduction. In reality, however, the type of inferential reason-
ing used by the celebrated investigator is abductive in nature. The reasoning adopted
by the profiler to infer causes from effects has the same structure. Moreover, Eco
explicitly compares the (fictional) activity of Sherlock Holmes, the abductions of
whom are guaranteed by the fictional universe constructed by Arthur Conan Doyle
(and which, for that reason, can be called deductions by the fictional detective), with
the less successful and more uncertain activities of real, everyday detectives, whose
abductions remain such, in the absence of a God—or of an author—who can confirm
them by conforming his plot to them, or by conforming them to it. Eco says that in
this view, detectives are paid by society to formulate meta-abductions, whereas sci-
entists are paid to verify hypotheses. The science of profiling, we could add, tries
(sometimes unsuccessfully) to bridge this gap. It is not surprising, from this point of
view, that one of the early—and most famous—publications by FBI profilers opens
with a quotation from a famous (fictional) detective, Agatha Christie’s Hercule
Poirot (Douglas et al., 1986).
The activity of constructing what Eco calls hypocodified abductions, and of their
concatenation, is in sum equated by Eco to the construction of a text (Eco, 1983),
which is, as Bruner (1991) says, autoreferential in the sense that if it is well con-
structed, it “seems” true. The analysis of narrative forms, as will be seen, teaches us
that both the person who wishes to recount an episode to others and those who wish
to understand and evaluate it tend to carry out a series of cognitive operations aimed
at weaving a plot with plausible causal, motivational, and temporal connections. The
subject must therefore organize the information into an organic whole by setting it
within a complex plot of actions and events that is not only structurally similar to a
narration but is a narration. For example, even in the most methodologically correct
of approaches, that of investigative psychology, when one examines the (rare) mate-
rial of published profiles, both the police who ask for the profile and the profilers
themselves call their activity “plotting” (Alison, West, & Goodwill, 2004), and
indeed they surround their practical activity with numerous caveats that describe, in
 Verde, Nurra / Criminal Profiling   15

substance, the presence of creative, unverified abductions. By way of example, let

us look at the cautions that Alison et al. (2004) themselves suggest in an article that
describes, as an example, a case in which a linkage activity has been attempted:

Given that few definitive data sets of comparable cases currently exist with respect to
very low incidence crimes, in such cases psychologists should make it explicit, when
constructing reports on such crimes, that they lack a sufficient empirical and scientific
basis to bring them within the realms of admissible expert testimony. Similarly, psy-
chologists should ensure, by express statements prefacing their reports, that the police
are aware of the fact that without any established principles and procedures, or definitive
data sets, there is always a risk of any conclusions going beyond the evidence. Thus, in
such cases where limited empirical studies exist and where there is a paucity of data, any
such psychological advice should be presented as opinion informed by professional
insight and rational speculation, with the necessary attendant caveats. (pp. 79-80)

Given all the above, we can claim that even in the most methodologically correct
cases, in striving to understand the offender’s behavior at the scene of the crime, the
profiler gathers, evaluates, and connects different lots of data, necessarily weaving
them into a narrative, a higher level abductive process (an abduction made up of lower
level ones), which at best will never correspond completely to what has actually hap-
pened. And indeed, narratives are viewed by social psychologists as being based on
abductive processes, and give rise to equally abductive processes in the reader (Oatley,
1996); the profiler tries to build a narrative (via abduction) stemming from the data of
the crime scene, a narrative capable of connecting the various elements presented to
him by the reality of the crime. This is in Oatley’s (1996) view no less scientific than
the ordinary Baconian procedures: “the narrative mode is useful in many domains, not
just in fiction. It is based on distinctive psychological processes, and it is used widely
in explanation, including scientific explanation” (p. 123).
In fact, the five questions asked by the profiler (why, where, when, how, and who;
cf. Kocsis & Palermo, 2006) appear on closer examination similar to the five rules
of an effective script of a drama, as formulated by the famous literary critic Kenneth
Burke (1945/1969). According to Burke, five elements are necessary in a narrative—
the similarities with the concepts proper to the field of profiling are shown in paren-
theses: act (a crime—what), scene (the crime scene—when), agent (a criminal—who),
agency (a particular weapon—how), and purpose (the motive of the crime, or the
apparent lack of motive and related possible psychopathology—why); moreover,
there is the “problem,” which is constituted by the disequilibrium among the five
elements quoted and which gives rise to the action, in our parallel, a crime scene that
poses problems for investigators, who begin to gather and sum up clues.
The point is illustrated by Peter Brooks (1984), who uses the term plot to explain
how the writer puts together a story and how the reader is naturally led to understand
it, and the fabula is the logical and chronological order of the events as they have
actually taken place (the truth of the crime committed by a particular criminal), the
16   International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology

plot is the order in which the events appear in the storyteller’s—here, profiler’s—
narrative reconstruction (Brooks, 1984).
Let us now look in greater detail at the motivations underlying the activities of
plot construction, which, in accordance with Brooks’ terminology, we will call plot-
ting. We will consider the plot as a cognitive operation implemented by the indi-
vidual to organize all those messages that are formed according to a time sequence.
From this standpoint, plotting is logic, and logic is the dynamic of the narrative.
Brooks (quoting Sherlock Holmes) points out that in the 19th-century detective
story, every human action has an underlying motive. This is exemplified in the fol-
lowing passage from The Adventure of the Cardboard Box by Conan Doyle
(1917/1996), in which Sherlock Holmes asks:

“What is the meaning of it, Watson?” said Holmes solemnly as he laid down the paper.
“What object is served by this circle of misery and violence and fear? It must tend to
some end, or else our universe is ruled by chance, which is unthinkable. But what end?
There is the great standing perennial problem to which human reason is as far from an
answer as ever.” (p. 396)

As Brooks (1984) points out, Sherlock Holmes is troubled because he cannot

organize the clues gathered in individual cases into an overall, organic theoretical
explanation that is valid for all cases, in what we could call a general plot. We
glimpse the human mind’s need to read into events a comprehensible deliberate
design that is accessible to investigation. The most famous detective in literature
needs to control the ambiguity and complexity of reality. To do so, he must give
meaning (via abduction) to ambiguous signs; he must discover a story that has a
logical and temporal order in the past and displays clear causal links between origin,
purpose, and solution.
The crime scene does not give the profiler direct access to what has really hap-
pened; it merely enables him to reconstruct a narration on the basis of the clues
available. According to the historian Carlo Ginzburg (1990), the very idea of narra-
tion first originated in a hunter society, from the deciphering of traces. Communities
of hunters—in Ginzburg’s evocative reconstruction—would have learnt to narrate
by exploiting their ability to track their prey, thereby developing the ability to follow
the tracks of stories, the threads of narrative speech. In the same way, profilers—
those modern-day hunters—stalk their prey among those who leave traces, criminal
“stains” on the fabric of society.
Let us recapitulate what we are trying to say via a simplified example. If a behav-
ioral pattern exhibited at the crime scene suggests that the serial killer is affected by
some psychiatric disorder, then it is reasonable to suppose that the killer may have
been under therapy at a mental health facility. This conclusion is indeed possible,
and is substantiated by percentages given by researchers on the relationship between
mental illness and crime. It is, however, by no means certain, because a person with
 Verde, Nurra / Criminal Profiling   17

psychiatric problems may well never have come into contact with mental health care
services (as happens in given percentages).
The hypotheses that can be formulated with regard to the causes of crime are
always possible and never certain. Moreover, the further we move away from the
factual data, and the percentages of the inductive–deductive methods, the greater
the risk of error. The following example is emblematic of reasoning by axioms and
illustrates what has been said:

Abduction I
If the crime has been committed at 10 o’clock in the morning (Result)
And anyone who has a job is busy at 10 o’clock in the morning (Rule)
Then the killer does not have a steady job (Case)

Once this conclusion has been reached, it will be used by the profiler as a premise
for a further abduction:

Abduction II
If the killer does not have a steady job (Result)
And the jobless have financial difficulties (Rule)
Then the killer has financial difficulties (Case)

It is therefore essential to take into account all the alternative conclusions that can
be reached from the same premises and to attribute a differential possibility to the
different plots on the basis on the estimated possibility of the different abductions
(which leads to the subsequent step after a creative abduction has been made, i.e. the
passage to the inductive phase, and the empirical verification of the hypothesis con-
structed via abduction); in the absence of numerical data, a higher percentage of
possibility should be attributed to those conclusions that are supported by a greater
number of premises.
Thus, the profiler can be conceived as a particular kind of a narrator who starts out
from the certainty of the crime scene, and from this draws some more certain conclu-
sions (those based on criminalistics, which refer to what Eco calls hypercodified
abductions) and other conclusions (based on the profiling techniques he uses) that
have a weaker value of certainty. It should, however, be borne in mind that each
individual (each profiler) has different conceptions of reality, different cognitive
structures, and therefore different ways of structuring a story, or of inventing, which
is the same thing, or indeed of creatively abducting it, which is again the same thing.
Such personal differences can be seen at the intracultural level, but they are even
more evident at the intercultural level. Great caution must therefore be exercised in
comparing psychological profiles and methods of profiling used in different cultural
contexts, as the above-mentioned story of the Australian Granny Killer teaches us
(Kocsis & Palermo, 2007).
18   International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology

With regard to the mental representation of any human experience, these concepts
can be used to point out the risks that profilers probabilistically run when they recon-
struct the way in which the crime has been committed. This reveals that much of the
activity of profiling involves the use of an intuitive method that is far from systematic
and that is based on creative abductions regarding not a general law, but the particular
law of the characteristics of the person who “should” have committed the crime. Even
when some of the elements of the profile stem from quasi-deductive abductions follow-
ing an inductive process (empirical research with some degree of statistical validation),
the combination of the elements into a profile must nevertheless be based on some
degree of abduction; it seems inevitable that where there is a lack of fundamental ele-
ments of coherence in the reconstruction of an episode, these will be inferred. Indeed,
the psychology of testimony reveals that a witness who is called on to recount an epi-
sode will tend to fill in the gaps in his memory by unconsciously inserting into his
account elements that have logical coherence with the narration. This will happen even
more easily when the whole story must be told, as in the case of criminal profiling.
The main reason for this may lie in the “uniqueness of each offender and situa-
tional variables of his modus operandi,” as Kocsis and Palermo (2006, pp. 328-329)
assert in their discussion of the scant success of profiling techniques. This means that
the science of profiling is essentially idiographic (i.e., based on creative abductions
inferring particularities), and that efforts aimed at making it nomothetic may be vain,
as shown by research into the usefulness and validity of profiling.

Conclusions: Profiles as Narratives

Studying the physical elements of the crime scene enables the offender’s behav-
ior to be reconstructed and constitutes a simple narrative modality that uses the more
secure (hypercodified) abductions based on the logic and precision of the empirical
sciences. The next step, in which the particular features of the crime scene are
matched with personal details (height, age, sex, marital status, occupation, etc.),
depends on the characteristics and size of the database constructed within that
particular cultural context. Finally, the modus operandi and signature enable more
creative abductive inferences to be made regarding the personality of the offender
and the presence of any mental disorders of criminological, psychological, and
psychiatric relevance.
However, bringing together the hypotheses regarding the facts—hypotheses
derived from comparison with similar cases—and attempting to delineate the pecu-
liar psychology of the offender is quite another thing. As has been mentioned above,
such activity is amateur in nature and uses a type of reasoning based not so much on
induction–deduction as on Peirce’s scheme of abduction. That is to say, it moves
from one particular to another particular, without ever making generalizations
and then shifting back to the individual level. We are therefore operating within a
 Verde, Nurra / Criminal Profiling   19

framework similar to that of the clinical idiographic method, with the difference that
we do not know who the patient is; indeed, the patient’s identity has to be discovered
on the basis of his presumed behavior and suggested mental disorder.
The construction of psychological profiles, notwithstanding the simplifications of
certain doctrines, is clearly a tricky, composite art. Substantially narrative in charac-
ter, it starts out with a series of factual data that become progressively less precise
(moving from the exact sciences, with their hypercodified abductions, to scientific
psychology, with its hypocodified abductions, and finally to the creative abductions
of the “inspired” profiler). Subsequently, these data must be fitted into a plot in a
plausible and coherent fashion in order to be used in the search for the offender. Then
again, are plausibility and coherence not essential features of any self-respecting nar-
rative? The best profiler will therefore be one who constructs the plausible, coherent
story that most closely approaches reality. No easy task.

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