ABSTRACT
This research aimed to advance knowledge about how far it was possible to predict characteristics of offenders from characteristics of offences, characteristics of victims, and descriptions of offenders by victims and witnesses. It was based on case files of convicted offenders (345 burglary and 310 violence) in Nottinghamshire, where nobody (victim, witness or police) knew the identity of the offender at the time of the offence. Topics addressed included: (1) characteristics of offenders; (2) the reliability of police-recorded descriptions of offenders; (3) how offenders were apprehended; (4) the accuracy of victim and witness descriptions in relation to police-recorded offender characteristics; (5) how far victims and witnesses agreed in describing offenders; (6) how far characteristics of offenders could be predicted from offence and victim characteristics; (7) how far offenders repeated similar types of offences and victims; (8) the similarity of co-offenders; and (9) relationships between age/sex/ ethnicity/address offender profiles, age/sex/address victim profile and location/site/time/day offence profiles.
