OFFENDER PROFILING: A STUDY OF VIOLENT OFFENDERS IN SWEDEN.

Abstract: Criminal profiling methods have been shown to be useful in predicting offender characteristics based on crime-scene and victim characteristics. However, a limited amount of studies within this field have been conducted in a Swedish cohort. In this study, data on 12 offenders with a conviction for murder, manslaughter or attempted murder or manslaughter from a metropolitan city in Sweden were analyzed. Court documents were used to gather information on offenders, crime-scene, victim, and offender-victim relationships. A two-step cluster analysis was used to determine if common characteristics were amongst them in order to form profiles. The outcome was two profiles; the more prominent one characterized by a young male, single, unemployed, with a history of substance abuse and violent criminality, using a knife against friends or acquaintances. That profile was also comparable to a profile from a previous study done within the same cohort. The collective aim of these studies is to build a longitudinal database on violent offenders in this city, which hopefully could aid the Swedish Police to possibly identify suspects in future violent crimes.