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.