For your interest.. there's a fascinating piece in today's Guardian by documentary maker Jon Ronson. It's about meeting some of the people who were famous for criminal profiling and really nicely shows the almost romantic appeal of the somewhat mysterious practice, while contrasting that with the huge pitfalls of getting it wrong. Also quite an interesting take on criminology as a field from an outsider's perspective when he attends a conference and comments on the increased focus on statistics as a safer bet in these situations.
I read this on Saturday too, enjoyable, and typically Jon Ronson. Always hanging out with strange and powerful people on the fringes.. I think psychologists can have a (small) role to play in crime detection, but surely it should always be along side other methods, never the primary tool. Also picked up on the new found need / love of stats, though the idea that they are in some way neutral and scientific is of course also questionable
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