- 著者
-
桐生 正幸
- 出版者
- 心理学評論刊行会
- 雑誌
- 心理学評論 (ISSN:03861058)
- 巻号頁・発行日
- vol.61, no.3, pp.344-358, 2018 (Released:2020-01-18)
- 参考文献数
- 58
In recent years, offender profiling research has played a substantial role in criminal psychology. To date, criminal etiology and the psychology of delinquency have been the focus of criminal psychology. These methods were demonstrated to be useful in criminal investigations involving psychological analysis of criminal behavior. This may be evaluated as taking after the reasoning method of Sherlock Holmes, the fictional master detective. This article discusses the historical development and present state of offender profiling and its future, with reference to the Sherlock Holmes period and reasoning method. The history of criminal profiling can be broadly divided into three periods: before the FBI (the period of Holmes); the development and implementation of FBI methods; and the current period, in which statistics are used. This can also be called the history of transition from a period that focused on psychiatry and clinical psychology to one focusing on social psychology and environmental criminology. The main analyses of this method are “linkage analysis,” “criminal profile assumption,” and “geographical profiling,” as well as statistical analyses, which comprise multidimensional scaling and decision trees, among others. In modern-day Japan, analytical findings from offender profiling are used in investigating officers’ decision-making in the same way as eyewitness reports, information regarding criminal techniques, and information obtained from forensic data. Psychological techniques have been utilized in the criminal investigation setting since “polygraph tests” that test for the presence or absence of recollection. However, currently, analytical findings are provided only as investigation support information, which can hardly be described as ideal. In general, criminal profiling has not reached the wisdom displayed by Holmes. Ideal criminal profiling entails an “investigating officer” deciding on an investigation plan founded on various types of analytical information. This practice demonstrates “abductive reasoning,” wherein the truth is uncovered while a hypothesis is being repeatedly formulated. This necessitates future methods entailing statistical abductive reasoning using Bayesian inference, among others, and a multi-disciplinary research environment.