It’s no secret that my primary interest is in the mind of a criminal – more specifically, the mind of a serial killer as well as the behavioral aspects of a crime scene.
My latest crime thriller Dark Mind delves deeper into the psyche of a serial killer known only as Keo to readers until his identity is revealed. Vigilante detective Emily Stone uses her innate abilities and creates a profile of the killer using these techniques.
In Compulsion, Emily Stone’s love interest Rick Lopez uses a form of profiling called a “Threshold Assessment”. He carefully weighs the evidence from the serial homicide crime scenes, criminal behavior patterns, and victimology to begin to put together a preliminary profile of the serial killer.
I’m frequently asked, “What’s profiling and how does it work?”
Many people think of profiling as some type of psychic or other intuitive paranormal ability and not something that should be used as a practical resource in all types of criminal investigations.
There are two types of effective profiles that can be used: threshold assessment and criminal profile.
Every investigator or detective should know how to incorporate profiling into his or her investigations as an investigative tool. It should never be done in place of a solid investigation; however, it should be one of the pieces available in the criminal investigation arsenal.
No two crime scenes occur in the same way or are ever exactly alike. This is where it’s important for the investigator to use his or her analytical and deductive reasoning skills in a completely objective manner.
According to criminal profiler and forensic scientist, Brent Turvey, a Threshold Assessment refers to a document that reviews the initial evidence of crime behavior, victimology, and crime scene characteristics of a particular case or a series of cases. This profiling procedure is the evaluation of what is understood to be fact about a particular case or cases and does NOT render the conclusions or opinions of a full criminal profile report.
A Threshold Assessment should include the following:
1. Overview of established facts of the case.
2. Overview of established facts relevant to the victimology (thorough study of the victim).
3. Overview of established facts relevant to the crime scene.
4. Initial hypothesis of motivational behaviors.
5. Initial hypothesis of offender characteristics.
6. Suggestions of further facts needed to be determined or analyzed.
7. Suggestions of further facts needed through victimology.
8. Suggestions and potential strategies for suspect development.
All of this information is helpful in creating a full criminal profile, which is a “court-worthy” document that incorporates all of the physical and behavioral evidence relating to the known victimology and crime scene characteristics of the offender responsible for the crime or series of crimes. This profiling document concludes with the opinions and conclusion of the profiler of the most logical suspect for the case or series of cases.
Criminal profiling shouldn’t be limited to just homicide investigations; it can used for burglary, rape, and arson investigations as well.
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Check out the profiling techniques I’ve incorporated into Compulsion and Dark Mind and see if you can solve the case first.
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Author Jennifer Chase 
Profiling from the detectives I’ve known in my life is a combination between science, personality, tendencies, and gut instinct.
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Very well put Caleb 🙂
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It is all good information and TWO BIG THUMBS UP to the person who has spent time and effort to put it all together helping people understand what is going on. However, it is 2012 and we have all the information that we need on Internet and it is sad that nobody has tried to prevent this problem from happening. I don’t know much about human psychology but I have read at least 30 articles written by master minds in psychology that people are not borne with this problem. Isn’t it true that “an ounce of cure is worth a pound of prevention” after all? Seriously, why should 80% of the money and effort being spent on how to fix it instead of finding how to prevent it? I served in military and few of my friends are in Police Force; we are aware of problems; what we want to hear is real solutions to this type of problems. How do we expect kids who are exposed to all the violence, war, and destruction in the world (and in many cases, sadly, in their homes) grow up as a normal person? Many of books, movies, and games, these days are designed, to create criminal minds; not including what we constantly hear on news.
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Thanks for your great comments Julian. I agree this is a very complex problem and I think that they or we want an easy answer, but there isn’t one. There is a huge debate that serial killers are born or made — both have some strong points.
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This was amazing! I completely agree, criminal profiling using threshold assessment is exactly what I am learning in my Criminal Profiling class right now. This is exactly the information I needed to help the details of threshold assessments stick into my head 🙂 and now I know where to find more books to read! Following you for more!
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Thanks for stopping by Jaliene Kathryn 🙂 Good luck in your class.
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