AN INVESTIGATION OF SCRIPTS IN THE HUNTING PROCESS OF SERIAL SEX OFFENDERS: IMPLICATIONS FOR GEOGRAPHIC PROFILING

Eric Beauregard, Ph.D.Department of Criminology, University of South Florida

Jean Proulx, Ph.D.School of Criminology, University of Montreal

&Kim Rossmo, Ph.D.

Criminal Justice Department, Texas State University

8th International Investigative Psychology ConferencePerpetrators, Profiling, Policing: Theory and Practice

December 15-16, 2005, The Keyworth Centre London Southbank University London, UK

TYPOLOGIES OF GEOGRAPHIC BEHAVIOR: SEX OFFENDERS

- Typologies of offending behavior that take geographic aspects of crime into account;

- Two types of offender: the geographically mobile and the geographically stable.

- Limitations: - First, most of these typologies have not been developed

empirically, on the basis of statistical analysis;- Second, very few typologies have considered results from

studies of the links between sex offenders' criminal and geographic behaviors;

- Third, most of these typologies assume that the offending process is stable, which clearly disregards situational aspects of criminal behavior.

HUNTING PROCESS (Rossmo, 1997)

4 victim search methods:Hunter: crimes within his city of residence - set out from their home base - search in the area within their awareness space;

Poacher: travel outside his city of residence, or by operating from an activity node other than his home base;

Troller: encounters his victims in the course of routine activities - crimes are often spontaneous, but they may in some cases have fantasized about or planned their offences, and so are ready when opportunities present themselves;

Trapper: occupation or position which brings potential victims to them, or use subterfuge to entice suitable victims into their home or to a location they control.

3 attack methods:Raptor: attacks his victims almost immediately upon encountering them;

Stalker: follows or watches his victim, and waits for an opportune moment to attack.

Ambusher: attacks are committed at locations at which the offender has a great deal of control, such as his residence or workplace.

RATIONAL CHOICE APPROACH: CRIME SCRIPTS

Cornish (1994) proposed the concept of CRIME SCRIPTS to:

1. facilitate the analysis of the entire crime commission process;2. identify the decisions and actions that offenders must make at each step of

their crimes as well as the situational variables that must be taken into account during the criminal activity.

The concept of script is borrowed form the field of cognitive science: “a special type of schema, known as an event schema, since it organizes our knowledge about how to understand and enact commonplace behavioral processes or routines” (Cornish, 1994b, p. 32).

AIM OF THE STUDY: identify hunting process scripts in a sample of serial sex crimes, using

multivariate statistical methods. hunting process served as a framework for the identification of key

variables for our scripts.

METHOD

PARTICIPANTS Serial sex offenders = any individual who had committed two or more sexual

assaults or sex-related crimes on a victim of any age who was a stranger to him (i.e., offenders with no personal relationship with the victim prior to the day the offense was committed);

72 serial sex offenders responsible for a total of 361 sexual assaults all incarcerated in a Correctional Service of Canada penitentiary

PROCEDURE A specially constructed instrument was developed to collect information from police

investigation reports and guide in-depth semi-structured interviews. Data, especially on hunting patterns, modus operandi, and geographic behavior,

were collected from the police reports and coded in our questionnaire.

DATA ANALYSIS 361 criminal events analyzed with a combination of Multiple Correspondence

Analysis (MCA) and Hierarchical Cluster Analysis (HCA) using SPAD software.

RESULTS: MULTIPLE CORRESPONDENCE ANALYSIS

Dimension 1 (14.71%): Discriminates between INDOORS and OUTDOORS offenders.

Dimension 2 (10.35%): Represents FAMILIARITY OF LOCATION.

Dimension 3 (7.38%): Contrasts those who commit PREDATORY offences to more OPPORTUNISTIC offenders.

Dimension 4 (6.65%): Describes the INVESTMENT of offenders in the commission of the crime.

2 DIMENSIONS FROM MULTIPLE CORRESPONDENCE ANALYSIS

COERCIVE SCRIPT: HOME-INTRUSION RAPE TRACK

(CLUSTER 3)

– Hunt through local visibility (victim ’s residence);

– Encounter, attack, commit, and release the victim at the same location, only familiar to the victim;

– “Hunter” hunting style & “Raptor” attack method;

– Physical violence is used to approach and commit the crime but offenders use threats in order to bring victim to crime site

COERCIVE SCRIPT: OUTSIDE RAPE TRACK

(CLUSTER 1 & 2)

– Hunt for a victim who is alone through a direct attack or an ambush;

– A_C_VR sites are all outside locations;– E & A = same location, usually familiar to both of them;– VR = place familiar to offender / Outside private – Hunter/Raptor hunting style; but kidnapping the victim;– Threat/physical violence = approach the victim and to

commit the crime– Use of only physical violence to bring victim to crime site

MANIPULATIVE SCRIPT: SOPHISTICATED RAPE TRACK

(CLUSTER 5)– Hunt for victims through an occupation/prostitution

market;– Troller/Ambusher hunting style;– Use of seduction, trick, and games to approach & bring

victim to crime site;– Encounter in a public place; attack and commit the

crime in an inside private location only familiar to them;– VR happens in an outside public location, usually the

same as the encounter;– Offenders use money/gift to commit the crime

MANIPULATIVE SCRIPT: FAMILY-INFILTRATOR RAPE TRACK

(CLUSTER 6)

– Hunt by infiltrating a family/using their occupation to gain access to victims;

– Victims = usually not alone;– E_A_C_VR = same inside private location, only familiar

to the offender;– Strategy of giving money/gift or others use drugs/alcohol

to approach, bring the victim to crime site and commit the crime.

NON-PERSUASIVE SCRIPT: DIRECT ACTION RAPE TRACK

(CLUSTER 4)

– Hunt through a local visibility; – E_A_C_VR = same location, usually an inside public

place;– No specific hunting style but act directly on the victim to

approach, bring to crime site and commit the crime;– Little or no investment from the offender;– No sophistication in the crime

SCRIPTS OF HUNTING PROCESS & GEOGRAPHIC PROFILING

SCRIPT COERICVE MANIPULATIVE NON-PERSUASIVE

TRACK Home-Intrusion

Outdoor Sophisticated Family-Infiltrator

Direct action

HUNTING STYLE

Hunter Hunter Troller Trapper N/A

ATTACK METHOD

Raptor Raptor Ambusher Ambusher N/A

HUNTING FIELD

Local Visibility

Ambush Prostitution Market

Occupation

Family

Occupation

Local Visibility

CONCLUSION

1. Importance of geographic variables in the hunting process of serial sex offenders;

2. Such results also demonstrate that target selection is highly dependent on the physical environment (Canter & Larkin, 1993);

3. The identified scripts permit us to appreciate the interaction between the behavioral and geographic aspect of criminal behavior;

4. This interaction between the behavioral and geographic components of the crime is an eloquent illustration of the very nature of the rational choice model of crime: it emphasizes the interactional, transactional, and adaptive nature of human behavior;

CONTACT DETAILS

Eric Beauregard, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor

Department of Criminology

University of South Florida

4202 E. Fowler Avenue, SOC107

Tampa, Florida, 33620-8100

USA

Phone: (813) 974-9907

Fax: (813) 974-2803

Email: ebeaureg@cas.usf.edu