Understanding Public Perceptions Towards Offender Profiling

This research aims to understand public perceptions towards offender profiling in the criminal justice system. Offender profiling has been defined as a technique used to support criminal investigations through analysing behavioural and personality characteristics to uncover a suspect. The purpose of this research is to provide insight into a current gap in the literature; past studies have explored psychologists and police officers views on offender profiling however, there is no current study on public perceptions. Quantitative methods were used to aid this research; this was established in the form of an online survey. Convenience and snowball sampling was used as the sampling method to gain participants. The final sample included 153 participants with a range in age and a good proportion between males and females. This survey includes an original scale, Perceptions Of Profilers Scale (POPS), which highlights the importance for this study as it is introducing a new perspective to a topic that has been extensively researched and is filling a gap in current literature. Results showed that participants who generated a higher POPS score, generally had a more positive perception towards profilers. Correlational analysis displayed associations between age, current students, and high crime fiction consumption and their POPS scores. Using multiple linear regression analysis, age was shown to be a statistically significant predictor of POPS scores therefore indicating that the higher the participants age, the higher the POPS score which means more positive perceptions. This study concludes that there is now evidence towards the public reflecting a more positive attitude to offender profiling and these results are significantly associated with age, whilst hinting at associations towards current students and crime fiction consumption. Suggestions for future research would be to produce this study on a larger scale to either confirm thes claims or to explore further other variables which could have significance.