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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Rossmo, D. Kim

Geographic profiling/ D. Kim Rossmo

 p.   cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8493-8129-0
1. Criminal psychology.  2. Environmental psychology. 3. Criminal behavior, Prediction of. 4. 

Behavioral assessment. 5. Applied human geography. 6. Crime analysis. I. Title.

HV6080.R575 1999
364.3--dc21

 99-051414

 CIP

This book contains information obtained from authentic and highly regarded sources. Reprinted 

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© 2000 by CRC Press LLC

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International Standard Book Number 0-8493-8129-0
Library of Congress Card Number 99-051414
Printed in the United States of America  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  0
Printed on acid-free paper

© 2000 by CRC Press LLC

Foreword

Criminology Comes of Age

Scientific criminology has its roots in crime mapping. The first great system-
atic studies of crime were cartographic exercises made possible by record-
keeping systems created to track criminal convictions in France and England
during the early part of the 19

th

 century. Compared with maps of demo-

graphic, economic, and social data, crime maps established some of the great
and enduring facts of the science: crime in general is associated with the
distributions of youth, males, the poor, and of the poorly educated. Maps of
crime patterns in major American cities during the early 20th century recon-
firmed the 19

th

 century findings, and added the observation that crimes and

criminals’ residences cluster in places predicted by urban form and transpor-
tation network geometry and that those places exhibited little local social
organisation.

These broad criminological findings resulted in broad policy prescrip-

tions for crime reduction. The observations on the correlation of youth and
crime led to special handling for youthful criminals: juvenile courts, reduced
punishments, and special school programs. The observed correlation
between crime and males led to special programs aimed at males: organised
sports programs, industrial job training, and counselling. Most importantly,
the correlation between crime and poverty resulted in programs aimed at
the elimination of poverty and in social interventions aimed at improving
the organisation of impoverished neighbourhoods. Such programs were
especially prominent and especially well funded in the 1960s and 1970s, led
by the American “War on Poverty” programs which — although desirable
in their own right — were funded on the promise that crime would be
reduced.

Crime was 

not

 reduced. Both violent and property crime rates skyrock-

eted. Crime rates tripled between 1960 and 1980 in both the U.S. and Canada;
violent crime rates quintupled over the same period in England and Wales.
At the same time, criminology provided little that proved useful to law
enforcement.

© 2000 by CRC Press LLC

What went wrong? Why was the early promise of crime mapping so

misleading? Why is this book an important corrective?

Rules That Commute

Maps are important analytic tools. They can display enormous amounts of infor-
mation in readily understandable form, but they can also be misleading: they are
often used to show average areal tendencies at the cost of obscuring important
variations within areal units. It becomes tempting to assume that the average areal
description also describes all the individual locations within the area.

The mapping trap is but one part of the broader problem of ascribing

aggregate average characteristics to individuals: the ecological fallacy. For
instance, if a crime map shows that crime rates are high in a poor neigh-
bourhood, two mistaken conclusions are sometimes drawn. The first is that
most of the people in the neighbourhood are criminals. The second is that
people are criminal because they are poor. In fact, studies of individuals
demonstrate that most poor people are honest, even in high crime neigh-
bourhoods. Studies of individual criminals show that adoption of a criminal
lifestyle leads to poverty at least as often as poverty tempts people into crime.

Criminology as a science has provided little to the professional world of

crime control because it has often been seduced by the ecological fallacy.
Crime control, and especially law enforcement, requires prescriptions that
can help resolve individual as well as aggregate situations. It needs rules that
commute.

By that, I mean statements of relationships that can be used to predict

both directions across a function. An elementary equation from beginning
physics is an example: 

F

 = 

ma

. Force equals mass times acceleration. This

means that the force with which a bullet hits a target can be calculated from
its mass and its acceleration. Because the relationship commutes, the equa-
tion could be algebraically manipulated to permit calculation of a bullet’s
acceleration from its mass and the force with which it hit, or to calculate its
mass from the force with which it hit and the acceleration at which it was
moving when it hit.

Many of the findings of criminology do not commute. For instance, while

most criminals live in poor neighbourhoods, most poor people are not
criminal. While most burglars are youthful, most youths do not commit
burglaries. While most serious child abusers were themselves abused as chil-
dren, most abused children do not become child abusers. As a result, crim-
inology has historically provided little that is helpful to those charged with
solving crimes, or predicting an offender’s future dangerousness, or reducing
fear in the community.

© 2000 by CRC Press LLC

In this book, Kim Rossmo presents an elegant demonstration of a new

set of criminological observations and rules that 

do

 commute.

Environmental Criminology and the Path to Crime Control

Environmental criminology studies criminal events as products of the con-
vergence of potential offenders with potential targets at specific points in
space-time under specific sets of limiting and facilitating conditions. Studies
in this field have focused on spatial patterns in offender and target movement
against the backdrop of broader social routines. They have generally dem-
onstrated that offenders, like other people, move around in predictable and
routine ways. The journey to crime is similar to and subject to the same
constraints as the journey to work or the shopping trip. In this sense, at least,
most criminals are like everybody else.

Environmental criminologists have largely been interested in crime pre-

vention. Their work has focused on predicting those places that are likely to
be vulnerable to crime because of the way they fit into people’s routine
activities and travel patterns. Situational prevention techniques prevent
crimes by preventing the convergence of offenders and targets in vulnerable
locations without simply displacing them to other places.

In this book, Kim Rossmo demonstrates that the models derived from

environmental criminology, and now taken as commonplace in the crime
prevention field, in fact commute. Models that predict where criminals are
likely to commit their crimes, based on knowledge about their normal main
activity nodes, can be usefully reversed to aid criminal investigations. The
locations of criminal events constitute spatial traces of offenders’ activity
patterns. Analysed in light of journey to crime models, a set of linked crime
locations can point investigators to the offender’s main activity nodes and
provide a useful tool for prioritising investigative leads. Criminology finally
comes of age: it provides rules that are useful to all phases of crime control.

Paul J. Brantingham
Professor of Criminology
Simon Fraser University
Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada

© 2000 by CRC Press LLC

Preface

My own interest in the area of geographic profiling stems from two sources.
First, as a new police officer assigned to Vancouver’s Skid Road, I could not
help but notice the relevance of environmental criminology, particularly the
ideas of Professors Paul and Patricia Brantingham from Simon Fraser Uni-
versity. The street has its hot spots, patterns, and rhythms — drug dealers
handle their markets; prostitutes work their favourite corners; even fleeing
criminals follow predictable patterns.

Second, as a police veteran of 20 years, I find the reasons for most crimes,

if seen from the perspective of the offender, are not difficult to understand.
Serial violent crime, however, is on the extreme fringe of human behaviour,
a ritual of violence that defies simple explanation. Comprehending these
individuals and their actions, even if only in some small measure, was a
daunting challenge.

The research and development of geographic profiling was thus under-

taken in an effort to integrate the academic with the practical, the scholastic
with the professional. I hoped that by combining science and strategy, exper-
iment and experience, something useful would be produced for the worlds
of both the ivory tower and the street.