Geographic profilers have access to a repertoire of strategies for predicting a serial offender’s home location. These strategies range in complexity—some involve more calculations to implement than others—and the assumption often made is that more complex strategies will outperform simpler strategies. In the present study, we tested the relationship between the complexity and accuracy of 11 strategies. Data were crime site and home locations of 16 UK residential burglars who had committed 10 or more crimes each. The results indicated that strategy complexity was not positively related to accuracy. This was also found to be the case across tasks that ranged in complexity (where complexity was determined by the number of crimes used to make a prediction). Implications for police’ policies and procedures, as well as our understanding of human decision-making, are discussed.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
A. V. Aho J. E. Hopcroft J. D. Ullman (1974) The Design and Analysis of Computer Algorithms Addison-Wesley Reading, Mass
O. Ashenfelter D. Ashmore R. Lalonde (1995) ArticleTitleBordeaux wine vintage quality and the weather Chance 8 7–14
D. P. Bovet P. Crescenzi (1994) Introduction to the Theory of Complexity Prentice Hall Englewood Cliff, NJ
B. Brehmer (1994) ArticleTitleThe psychology of linear judgement models Acta. Psychol. 87 137–154
D. Canter P. Larkin (1993) ArticleTitleThe environmental range of serial rapists J. Environ. Psychol. 13 63–69
D. V. Canter T. Coffey M. Huntley C. Missen (2000) ArticleTitlePredicting serial killers’ home base using a decision support system J. Quant. Criminol. 16 457–478
Carter, G., and Polger, P. (1986). A 20-year summary of National Weather Service verification results for temperature and precipitation. Technical Memorandum NWS FCST 31, Washington, DC, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
T. H. Cormen C. E. Leiserson R. L. Rivest C. Stein (2001) Introduction to Algorithms MIT Press Cambridge, Mass
L. J. Cronbach G. C. Gleser (1965) Psychological Tests and Personnel Selection University of Illinois Press Urbana, IL
H. A. David (1970) Order Statistics John Wiley and Sons New York
Z. Drezner H. W. Hamacher (2002) Facility Location: Applications and Theory Springer-Verlag Berlin
G. Gigerenzer P. Todd InstitutionalAuthorNameThe ABC Research Group. (1999) Simple Heuristics That Make Us Smart Oxford University Press New York
K. R. Hammond (1990) Functionalism and illusionism: Can integration be usefully achieved? R. M. Hogarth (Eds) Insights in Decision-Making The University of Chicago Press Chicago 22–261
J. Hartmanis R. Stearns (1965) ArticleTitleOn the computational complexity of algorithms T. Am. Math. Soc. 117 285–306
R. M. Hogarth (1980) Judgement and Choice Wiley Chichester, UK
R. J. Hommant D. B. Kennedy (1998) ArticleTitlePsychological aspects of crime scene profiling: Validity research Crim. Justice Behav. 25 319–343
D. Kahneman A. Tversky (1973) ArticleTitleOn the psychology of prediction Psychol. Rev. 80 237–251
I. Katz (1974) ArticleTitleLocal convergence in Fermat’s problem Math. Prog. 6 89–104
R. N. Kocsis H. J. Irwin (1997) ArticleTitleAn analysis of spatial patterns in serial rape, arson, and burglary: The utility of the circle theory of environmental range for psychological profiling Psych. Psychol. Law. 4 195–206
D. E. Knuth (1973) The Art of Computer Programming: Searching and Sorting Addison-Wesley Reading, Mass
H. W. Kuhn (1973) ArticleTitleA Note on Fermat’s Problem Math. Prog. 4 98–107
H. W. Kuhn R. E. Kuenne (1962) ArticleTitleAn efficient algorithm for the numerical solution of the generalized Weber problem in spatial economics J. Reg. Sci. 4 21–33
N. Levine InstitutionalAuthorNameAssociates (2000) Crimestat: A Spatial Statistics Program for the Analysis of Crime Incident Locations National Institute of Justice Washington, DC
L. A. Marascuilo M. McSweeney (1977) Nonparametric and Distribution-free Methods for the Social Sciences Wadsworth Belmont, CA
A. Newell H. A. Simon (1972) Human Problem Solving Prentice-Hall Englewood Cliffs, NJ
Paterson, M. S. (1996). Progress in selection. Proceedings of the 5th Scandinavian Workshop on Algorithm Theory, Lecture Notes in Computer Science 1097, Reykjavik, Iceland, Springer, Berlin, 368–379
L. Paquette T. Kida (1988) ArticleTitleThe effect of decision strategy and task complexity on decision performance Organ. Behav. Hum. Decis. Process. 41 128–142
J. W. Payne J. R. Bettman E. J. Johnson (1988) ArticleTitleAdaptive strategy selection in decision making J. Exp. Psychol.: Hum. Percept. Perform. 11 14–27
J. W. Payne J. R. Bettman E. J. Johnson (1993) The Adaptive Decision-Maker Cambridge University Press Cambridge, Mass
K. D. Rossmo (2000) Geographic Profiling CRC Press Boca Raton
B. Snook D. V. Canter C. Bennell (2002) ArticleTitlePredicting the home location of serial offenders: A preliminary comparison of the accuracy of human judges with a geographic profiling system Behav. Sci. Law. 20 1–10
B. Snook P. J. Taylor C. Bennell (2004) ArticleTitleGeographic profiling: The fast, frugal and accurate way Appl. Cogn. Psychol. 18 105–121
J. A. Swets R. M. Dawes J. Monahan (2000) ArticleTitlePsychological science can improve diagnostic decisions Psychol. Sci. Pub. Int. 1 1–26
Tamura, M., and Suzuki, M. (1997, July). Criminal profiling research on serial arson: Examinations of circle hypothesis estimating offender’s residential area. In Reports of the National Research Institute of Police Science, Research on Prevention of Crime and Delinquency 38: 13–25.
P. Tang P. Tak (1989) ArticleTitleTable-driven implementation of the exponential function in the IEEE floating-point arithmetic ACM. T. Math. Software. 15 144–157
P. J. Taylor C. Bennell B. Snook (2002) Problems of classification in investigative psychology K. Jajuga A. Sokolowski H. H. Bock (Eds) Classification, Clustering, and Data Analysis: Recent Advances and Applications Springer Heidelberg 479–487
A. M. Turing (1936) ArticleTitleOn computable numbers, with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem Proc. London Math. Soc. 2 IssueID42 230–265
J. Warren R. Reboussin R. R. Hazelwood A. Cummings N. Gibbs S. Trumbetta (1998) ArticleTitleCrime scene and distance correlates of serial rape J. Quant. Criminol. 14 35–59
E. Weiszfeld (1936) ArticleTitleSur le Point pour lequel la somme des distances de n points donnes est minimum Tohoku. Math. J. 43 355–386
G. O. Wesolowsky (1993) ArticleTitleThe Weber problem: History and perspectives Location Sci. 1 5–23
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
To whom correspondence should be addressed. Phone: +1-709-737-3101; E-mail: bsnook@play.psych.mun.ca
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Snook, B., Zito, M., Bennell, C. et al. On the Complexity and Accuracy of Geographic Profiling Strategies. J Quant Criminol 21, 1–26 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10940-004-1785-4
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10940-004-1785-4