ABSTRACT
As was outlined in Chapter 1, crime linkage rests on the assumptions of consistency (Canter, 1995) and distinctiveness in criminal behavior (Woodhams, Hollin, & Bull, 2007). As is described in Chapter 6, much of the research in the field of crime linkage has been concerned with testing the validity of these two principles. Generally speaking, this research supports the view that serial offenders display enough behavioral consistency and distinctiveness across their crimes to allow for at least a moderate degree of linkage accuracy, though the extent to which this is true varies across the conditions that have
Introduction 11 Behavioral Consistency and Personality and Social Psychology 12 Mischel and Shoda’s (1995) CAPS 13 Similarities and Differences between Personality Psychology and Investigative Psychology 15
Concepts 16 Data 16 Methodology 17
Applying the CAPS to Criminal Events 20 Situational Similarity 20 Type of Behavior 22 Expertise 23 Time Elapsed 24 Age of the Individual 24 Psychopathology 25
Conclusion 26 References 28
been tested (e.g., linkage accuracy tends to vary as a function of the behaviors under examination; Bennell, Mugford, Ellingwood, & Woodhams, 2014).
