A multivariate model of sexual offence behaviour: Developments in ‘offender profiling'. I.

Abstract

A multivariate model of sexual offence behaviour : developments in 'offender profiling'. I. ABSTRACTThe extrapolation of characteristics of criminals from information about their crimes, as an aid to police investigation, is the essence of 'profiling'. This paper proposes that for such extrapolations to be more than educated guesses they must be based upon knowledge of (1) coherent consistencies in criminal behaviour and ( 2 ) the relationship those behavioural consistencies have to aspects of an offender available to the police in an investigation. Hypotheses concerning behavioural consistencies are drawn from the diverse literature on sexual offences and a study is described of 66 sexual assaults committed by 27 offenders against strangers. Multivariate statistical analyses of these assaults support a fivecomponent system of rapist behaviour, reflecting modes of interaction with the victim as a sexual object. The potential this provides for an eclectic theoretical basis to offender profiling is discussed.

The characteristics of sexual abuse in sport: A multidimensional scaling analysis of events described in media reports

“…Perhaps the most prominent of these are the IntimacyAggression themes, juxtaposed as a bi-polar dimension. The same themes are also found in studies that have utilized similar statistical methods for examining the behavioral characteristics of rapists 22 (Canter & Heritage, 1990) and child molesters (Canter, Hughes, & Kirby, 1998), using similar behavioral variables. Unfortunately, Canter does not define a consistent set of themes that are applicable to multiple forms of sexual aggression, nor does he distinguish power and sex from aggression and intimacy.…”

“…MDS analyses were carried out using Statistica (version 5.5) and use a Guttman-Lingoes (Lingoes, 1973) algorithm. The approach taken here is similar to the methods employed by investigative psychologists to identify core behavioral themes that can be used to support offender profiling (e.g., Canter & Heritage, 1990).…”

Genuine and simulated suicide notes: An analysis of content

“…A number of studies have found such MDS models to be productive [24][25][26]. The particular power of SSA-I comes from its representation of the rank order of co-occurrence as rank orders of the distances in the geometric space (the use of ranks leads to it being considered non-metric MDS).…”

Functional consistency across two behavioural modalities: fire‐setting and self‐harm in female special hospital patients

“…Each behavioural data set was then subjected to a multi-dimensional scaling (MDS) technique, Smallest Space Analysis (SSA) (Lingoes and Guttman, 1973), which tests the relationship each variable has to every other variable across all cases. A Jaccard coefficient of association which only takes account of positive co-occurrence was used (Canter and Heritage, 1990). A visual summary of the relationships in the association matrix depicts the distances between the variables in the space as their ranked correlations, so that the shorter the distance between two variables, the higher their inter-correlation.…”