Psychological Profiling of Criminal Psychopaths: An Investigation into the Relationship between Behavior and Personality

From 1888-1891, a serial killer known as Jack the Ripper terrorized Whitechapel, London by murdering five women (Keppel, Weis, Brown, & Welch, 2005). Investigative profilers analyze crimes like the Jack the Ripper murders using the relationship between behavior and personality in an attempt to derive a set of hypotheses about the characteristics of the criminal offender from crime scene analysis. The goal of psychological profiling is to narrow the investigative field and catch the killer efficiently (McCann, 1992, LaBrode, 2007). In order to ensure capture before the criminal strikes again, the process profilers use to evaluate a crime scene must be accurate and efficient. Current criticisms against the profiling process target the necessity to account for situational factors and instability of behavior. In this literature review, the profiling process is analyzed through the investigation of the relationship between behavior and personality in the context of a crime scene and with a specific population: criminal psychopaths. The analysis of the profiling process and its criticisms suggests that the profiling process be adjusted to adhere to the crime scene evidence and only be used across multiple crimes as opposed to single offenses