Warp wrote:
>   This is rather odd given that criminal profiling is an important tool of
> investigation especially in the US:

That's a different kind of profiling.

"Offender profiling is a behavioral and investigative tool"

It's for investigating, not arresting. It's based on behavior, not statistics.

As I said, I'm not against "profiling" someone who is driving erratically 
and then checking if they're drunk.  I'm not against "profiling" someone who 
isn't paying taxes comparable to their lifestyle and finding out if they're 
getting paid under the table because they're in the country illegally.

The profiling people object to is the profiling based on things that *don't* 
have to do with the crime under investigation, such as genetics, age, 
clothing, hair style, or car color.

Or, to sum it up again:

1) When doing offender profiling, you already know there's an offender involved.

2) The profile you develop is specific to the criminal, based on clues left 
at a crime scene.

3) When doing offender profiling, you don't use the profile as a means to 
determine who to arrest. You use it as a means to determine who to 
investigate and what further clues to look for and what kind of traps to set.

In other words, you use the profile as a means of looking for more clues, 
not as a means of identifying a person. If the profile says "He probably had 
a vehicle", you ask the parking attendant for the video tapes of the cars 
that went in and out of the crime scene. You don't stop everyone with a 
vehicle and ask them for fingerprints. When the profile says "cunning" it 
means you don't set an obvious trap and hope the criminal won't notice; it 
doesn't mean you investigate lost of smart people who were around that day. 
If the profile says "likes to kill blond teenagers", you don't send cops 
dressed like little old black ladies walking around the park at night as 
bait in a trap for him.

"Various aspects of the criminal's personality makeup are determined from 
his or her choices before, during, and after the crime."

Offender profile is "this is what we think the criminal in *this* case is 
like, because of the clues he left."  It's also used mainly when someone is 
committing *multiple* crimes in the same way.  There's 500 murders this 
year. But *these* six all had the victim tied up by their left ankle from a 
tree and had their nose mashed in with a hammer left at the site. If we 
catch someone doing that a seventh time, it's probably a good idea to ask 
him about the other six.

Racial profiling is "a majority of the people who commit crime X have trait 
Y that they can neither control nor change, but we're going to look 
disproportionately at people with trait Y, presupposing that a 
disproportionate number of them will commit crime X."

About the closest racial profiling for illegal immigration would come to 
offender profiling would be "if you catch an illegal immigrant, check out 
his family too."  Or "if you catch an illegal immigrant working illegally, 
check out his coworkers."

Does this clarify?

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Linux: Now bringing the quality and usability of
   open source desktop apps to your personal electronics.

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