Profiling arson

Criminal psychological profiling is the forensic technique of inferring personal, psychological, demographic, and behavioral characteristics of offenders based on crime scene evidence. While the majority of research concerning criminal profiling has been focused on the investigation of crimes of sexual violence such as murder and rape, criminal psychological profiling is frequently described as being applicable to the investigation of serial arson crimes, and the frequency with which psychological profiling has been used in the investigation of arson crimes has been growing steadily over the past 30 years (Drabsch 2004; Kocsis 2004, 2006; Turvey 1999). This current entry reviews the growing body of literature in relation to arson profiling, especially focusing on approaches that have published a specific methodology that applies to arson, as opposed to approaches that have a generalized methodology that is not necessarily differentiated for arson.