The academic and the practitioner: Pragmatists' views of offender profiling.

Abstract

Pragmatic psychology, as outlined by D. Fishman (1999), serves as the inspiration for this article's recommendation to integrate the currently opposing factions within offender profiling. These factions have variously been referred to as “inductive/deductive,” “statistical/clinical,” or “academic/practitioner” approaches. This article outlines how the separation into different factions is both misrepresentative and needlessly divisive and thus undermines the potential contribution of behavioral science to the investigative endeavor. Through a case study, the article illustrates how a pragmatist's approach would encourage a more productive and synergistic dialogue between the camps. This, in turn, may lead to the creation of a useful and productive archive that would facilitate the professionalization of what has too often seemed an ill-formed forensic discipline.

Control and legacy as functions of perceived criticality in major incidents

“…Emphasis is therefore placed on systematic fieldwork, on comprehensive case studies, on an 'insider' assisting in the evaluation and on facilitating the research team's need to get 'inside the programme' and show an engaged, proactive understanding of it. The research is driven by a scientific effort but instead of a search for underlying laws and truths, pragmatic science is best viewed as a device to achieve specific goals rather than as an intellectual luxury (Alison, West & Goodwill, 2004;Fishman, 2003). Of course, this initial study represents a far more humble venture and simply describes (in the delegates own words) some of the complexity of managing critical incidents.…”

Applying crime scene analysis to the prediction of sexual recidivism in stranger rapes.

“…Crime scene analysis has been one of the predominant focuses of researchers within Investigative Psychology (IP; Canter, 2004) and police investigators (Ressler, Burgess, & Douglas, 1988) for many years. Researchers, police, and practitioners have commonly used a combination of idiographic and nomothetic approaches for crime scene analysis paralleling the methodology used in the recidivism and risk assessment literature (Alison, West, & Goodwill, 2004). Idiographic prediction of recidivism and clinical police-investigative CSA both attempt to understand the offense in its unique context on a case-by-case basis (Musolff, 2001).…”

The current role and contribution of “behavioural investigative advisers” (BIAs) to criminal investigation in the United Kingdom

“…The general framework for the analysis of the BIAs reports is a pragmatic approach, which incorporates the use of Toulmin's strategy for structuring arguments and behavioural advice (Alison et al, 2004(Alison et al, , 2010. The pragmatic approach emphasises the transparency of the overall BIA process, the need for understanding context, methodological rigour in the collection, evaluation and presentation of the pertinent crime scene information (Alison et al, 2004).…”

“…Each of the three separate areas of specialism generally has different professional backgrounds, theoretical focus, skill sets and investigative focus (Alison et al, 2004;Fox et al, 2020aFox et al, , 2020bKnabe-Nicol and Alison, 2011;Rainbow, 2011;Rainbow and Gregory, 2011;West, 2000). All BIAs have a dual background of psychology qualifications and investigative experience, which allows them to approach each case with a psychological reconstruction of the crime scene and behavioural understanding of the offender, his or her mindset (e.g.…”