Geographic Profiling – Presentation Abstract

Professor Kim Rossmo

Department of Criminal Justice

Geographic profiling is a strategic information management system used in the investigation of serial violent and sexual crime. Such crimes are difficult to solve and pose significant challenges for police agencies. Their stranger nature results in an investigative process that has to consider large populations of suspects, leading to resource problems and information overload. One of the tactics that can be employed by police in such cases is geographic profiling, an investigative methodology that analyzes an offender’s hunting behaviour and target selection. This process uses the locations of a connected series of crimes to determine the most probable area of offender residence. This is accomplished through the production of probability surfaces (“jeopardies”) that are integrated with street maps of crime areas.