Rachel Corbett

And then when you think about it, what does it really do to say, OK, we're looking for a young white male?

I mean, it doesn't narrow it down a whole lot.

I think it's around less than one might think from TV.

What's happened is it's really evolved into very specific forms of profiling today, like geographical profiling.

We know certain patterns of gun violence.

If there's a gunshot here, we think there's going to be another one over here.

patterns of retaliation or, you know, murderers tend to kill within their own zip code, for example, and maybe they'll slowly spread outward from that.

So there's certain ways to also kind of narrow things down based on

features like that, or victimology, as they say, which is, you know, if certain kinds of people go after certain kinds of victims, usually it's someone of your own race, for example.

So maybe there's still ways to, but I think they're much less ambitious in terms of what they can actually do with this science, if you want to call it art or science.

There was a study done in England that found that while something like 80% of the detectives used profiling felt it was very useful, only about 2.5% of those profiles actually led to the apprehension of a suspect.

So there's kind of a difference between belief and reality there.

Yeah, well, I think it's useful in a general sense for some law enforcement to be versed in some level of psychology, sociology, because I do think it helps to imagine how this crime might have happened, the kind of person.

Maybe it just informs something in the back of your mind and guides certain questions down the road.

It's just when it becomes too much of a part of your mind, you start thinking, it's got to be this person, it's got to be a white male, you know, and then that limits you from actually looking at other suspects.

So it can kind of go both ways.

Yeah, it's like, especially they start close to home and then they kind of, they will start to spread out.

But I think it's just, it has to do with comfort.

Just the kind of, you know, they may not do it right.

They're not going to do it right next to their house, but they may do it down by the river where they, near where they live or that kind of thing.