Principles of Geographical Offender Profiling

Book excerpt: Geographical Offender Profiling (GOP) is the term that has emerged for the examination of where offences take place and the use of that examination to formulate views on the nature of the offender and where s/he might be based. As such, it has become the cornerstone of 'offender profiling'. By its nature, GOP bridges psychology, geography, criminology and forensic science and is of academic interest to all those disciplines as well as practical significance to police investigators. This book brings together a cross-section of the major papers published in the field that lay out the concepts and foundations of this area - including some widely quoted but difficult to obtain 'classic' papers - with an introduction that puts the papers into an overall context and a concluding extensive bibliography of the publications relevant to this rapidly growing area.