Are Criminal Profilers “Any Better Than A Bartender?” Not Necessarily, Suggests Review Of 40 Years Of Relevant Research

Can we say, after the passage of many decades since the job of offender profiling (OP) was established, that this profession is a craft worthy of trust, one whose practitioners make use of tried and tested tools, or rather would it be more accurate to describe it as an art-form grounded in intuition that supplies us with foggy, uncertain predictions? Answers to these questions are given by Bryanna Fox and David P. Farrington in Psychological Bulletin, where they present a systematic review and meta-analysis of 426 publications on OP from 1976 through 2016. Continue reading →