The Perils of Profiling

School Administrator, Feb, 2000 by Gil-Patricia Fey, J. Ron Nelson, Maura L. Roberts

Ambiguity and legal ramifications loom large as educators consider how to identify students inclined to commit violence

A 1993 report by the American Psychological Association on violent youth cast an enticing invitation to consider the use of student profiling when it stated: "Our schools and communities can intervene effectively in the lives of children and youth to reduce or prevent their involvement in violence. Violence involving youth is not random, uncontrollable or inevitable."

Today, under considerable pressure to demonstrate they are taking every possible action to ensure safety at schools in their communities, school leaders are turning to what they see as a promising prevention tool formerly reserved for criminal investigations--student profiling.

However, identifying students at risk of committing violence through the use of checklists of personal characteristics and behaviors is a strategy accompanied by plenty of unanswered questions, recognized weaknesses and serious implications for implementation. Deciding whether to profile elementary and secondary school students is a decision not to be made lightly.

Two Types

Criminal investigators and criminologists in the United States have used profiling since 1969 when the Federal Bureau of Investigation introduced it as an investigative strategy. Law enforcers view a profile as a "set of behavioral indicators forming a very characteristic pattern of actions or emotions that tend to point to a particular condition," according to Brent Turvey, a criminal profiler and partner in a forensics firm in Corpus Christi, Texas. To arrive at the characteristics that comprise a specific profile, a person's behavior is compared to case studies and evidence from other profiles.

Despite its use over the past several decades, Turvey says criminal profiling is beset by several unresolved issues. These include lack of agreement regarding the basic information that a profile should account for, the appropriate uses of profiling, ethical and unethical conduct by profilers and whether the profiling process should be peer reviewed. These serious questions should give pause to educational leaders considering the use of profiling in schools.

Essentially, two types of profiling exist: inductive and deductive criminal profiling.

In inductive profiling, the profiler looks for patterns in the available data and infers possible outcomes--in the case of schools, possible acts of violence committed by students who fit the pattern. The strategy is used to predict behavior and apprehend potential offenders before they commit a crime. In criminology, inductive profiles include formal and informal studies of incarcerated criminals and public data sources, such as news media reports. General profiles, which can be assembled quickly, include general characteristics on a one-or two-page list.

However, the use of inductive profiling carries serious implications. First, the generalizations that are made to construct the profile stem from limited and often very small population samples.

Inductive profiles also only take into account the characteristics of apprehended offenders and neglect offenders who are at large. Characteristics of non-apprehended offenders are likely to be missing from the profiles.

Another problem is that behavior and motivations are assumed to be constant over time in inductive profiling. For violence prediction among children, this assumption neglects the very nature of changes in children's behavior during their developmental process over time.

The second method, deductive profiling, interprets forensic evidence from a crime to reconstruct behavior patterns, deduce offender characteristics, demographics, emotions and motivations.

Anyone who has read Sherlock Holmes stories by Arthur Conan Doyle has encountered deductive profiling. Holmes uses physical evidence, gut feelings and his work experience to deduce a profile of the criminal. Deductive profiling requires great skill and considerable effort.

Most FBI profiling is deductive in nature. However, while an offender for a particular crime might be identified successfully, deductive profiling cannot serve as a reliable base for generalizations and identifications of other offenders. Several researchers have pointed out repeatedly that a review of profiling use by the FBI clearly shows it is appropriate only for specific crimes and cases.

Discouraging Evidence

Would either profiling strategy be a useful tool for school leaders to use in identifying students prone to violence? Do we have a reliable knowledge base to apply either inductive or deductive profiling as a strategy in schools?

Could the crimes committed by the youths in Littleton, Jonesboro and Springfield have been predicted with the use of inductive profiling? Did we have previous incidents in other schools that pointed undoubtedly to the occurrence of these tragedies or allowed the construction of a profile that would have identified the students involved in the incidents?