ABSTRACT

The discussion by Snook, Taylor, and Bennell (2004) of geographical1 profiling and the counter-claims from an ex-police officer in Rossmo’s (2005) comments obscure the elegant simplicity of the task that Snook et al. set their subjects. In essence, they gave their subjects a straightforward set of geometric rules and asked them to apply those rules to a set of points drawn on a sheet of paper. Broadly these rules amount to asking respondents to mark the spot where they estimate the centre of gravity to be for all the points. In so far as that the dots on the paper reflect actual locations of offences on a geographical map and the offender’s home really is near to the centre of gravity of those locations this task can be seen as an analogy for predicting the residential location of an offender from knowledge of where his crimes are committed.