Offender Profiling

Presented by Dr. Steve Taylor, Offender Profiling looks at the realities behind the psychology of offender profiling, noting that the real work is different from media portrayals of singlehanded forensics superheroes such as Robbie Coltrane in Cracker. Explaining that group efforts are involved when there is no obvious suspect, the program looks at deductive and inductive approaches—i.e., top-down (to suggest a likely perpetrator) or bottom-up (using variables and scientific theories)—to building a sketch of a criminal's personality, behavior, and possible history through an examination of variables that might indicate a pattern. While the program suggests that a career in the field might not necessarily be as exciting as seen in fictional counterparts (“in real life, it's more of a desk job”), it also looks at some higher-profile cases, including the 1980s “Railway Murders,” the 17th-century Bosworth field witches, and the Rachel Nickell murder investigation. Some of the participant experts here seem more than a bit jaded (“…say we had a hundred rapes…” one nonchalantly notes, to illustrate some point I don't remember nearly as well). A strong optional purchase. Aud: H, C, P. (J. Williams-Wood)