Geographic Profiling as a Criminal Investigative Methodology in Criminal Investigation of Serial Crimes

Abstract

This article presents geographical offender profiling as modern criminal investigation tool for law enforcement officer to identify locations of serial violent offenders by analyzing geographical distribution of committed serial crimes, nature of the crimes and the ways in which the crimes were committed. Geographic profiling consists of collecting information and facts from the crime scene of a criminal event, processing, analyzing and exchanging information and conclusions about the crime and offender while the entire process of profiling and drawing conclusions is theoretically framed and postulated in the framework of the theory of criminal behavior. At present, several major software programs are being employed by police agencies to perform geographic profiling tasks, including Rigel, CrimeStat, and Dragnet. This paper presents FBI ViCAP program that provides investigative and analytical support in investigation of serial crimes to all law enforcement agencies in the United States. Furthermore, this paper also provides a basis for further discussion on the possibilities of including techniques of geographic profiling in the practice of crime investigation in Bosnia and Herzegovina.