AN INVESTIGATION OF SCRIPTS IN THE HUNTING PROCESS OF SERIAL SEX OFFENDERS: IMPLICATIONS FOR GEOGRAPHIC PROFILING

1. AN INVESTIGATION OF SCRIPTS IN THE HUNTING PROCESS OF SERIAL SEX OFFENDERS: IMPLICATIONS FOR GEOGRAPHIC PROFILING Eric Beauregard, Ph.D. Department of Criminology, University of South Florida Jean Proulx, Ph.D. School of Criminology, University of Montreal & Kim Rossmo, Ph.D. Criminal Justice Department, Texas State University 8th International Investigative Psychology Conference Perpetrators, Profiling, Policing: Theory and Practice December 15-16, 2005, The Keyworth Centre London Southbank University London, UK

2. TYPOLOGIES OF GEOGRAPHIC BEHAVIOR: SEX OFFENDERS • Typologies of offending behavior that take geographic aspects of crime into account; • Two types of offender: the geographically mobile and the geographically stable. • Limitations: • First, most of these typologies have not been developed empirically, on the basis of statistical analysis; • Second, very few typologies have considered results from studies of the links between sex offenders' criminal and geographic behaviors; • Third, most of these typologies assume that the offending process is stable, which clearly disregards situational aspects of criminal behavior.

3. HUNTING PROCESS (Rossmo, 1997) 4 victim search methods: Hunter: crimes within his city of residence - set out from their home base - search in the area within their awareness space; Poacher:travel outside his city of residence, or by operating from an activity node other than his home base; Troller: encounters his victims in the course of routine activities - crimes are often spontaneous, but they may in some cases have fantasized about or planned their offences, and so are ready when opportunities present themselves; Trapper: occupation or position which brings potential victims to them, or use subterfuge to entice suitable victims into their home or to a location they control. 3 attack methods: Raptor: attacks his victims almost immediately upon encountering them; Stalker: follows or watches his victim, and waits for an opportune moment to attack. Ambusher: attacks are committed at locations at which the offender has a great deal of control, such as his residence or workplace.

4. RATIONAL CHOICE APPROACH: CRIME SCRIPTS Cornish (1994) proposed the concept of CRIME SCRIPTS to: • facilitate the analysis of the entire crime commission process; • identify the decisions and actions that offenders must make at each step of their crimes as well as the situational variables that must be taken into account during the criminal activity. • The concept of script is borrowed form the field of cognitive science: “a special type of schema, known as an event schema, since it organizes our knowledge about how to understand and enact commonplace behavioral processes or routines” (Cornish, 1994b, p. 32). AIM OF THE STUDY: • identify hunting process scripts in a sample of serial sex crimes, using multivariate statistical methods. • hunting process served as a framework for the identification of key variables for our scripts.

5. METHOD PARTICIPANTS • Serial sex offenders = any individual who had committed two or more sexual assaults or sex-related crimes on a victim of any age who was a stranger to him (i.e., offenders with no personal relationship with the victim prior to the day the offense was committed); • 72 serial sex offenders responsible for a total of 361 sexual assaults • all incarcerated in a Correctional Service of Canada penitentiary PROCEDURE • A specially constructed instrument was developed to collect information from police investigation reports and guide in-depth semi-structured interviews. • Data, especially on hunting patterns, modus operandi, and geographic behavior, were collected from the police reports and coded in our questionnaire. DATA ANALYSIS • 361 criminal events analyzed with a combination of Multiple Correspondence Analysis (MCA) and Hierarchical Cluster Analysis (HCA) using SPAD software.

6. RESULTS: MULTIPLE CORRESPONDENCE ANALYSIS • Dimension 1 (14.71%): Discriminates between INDOORS and OUTDOORS offenders. • Dimension 2 (10.35%): Represents FAMILIARITY OF LOCATION. • Dimension 3 (7.38%): Contrasts those who commit PREDATORY offences to more OPPORTUNISTIC offenders. • Dimension 4 (6.65%): Describes the INVESTMENT of offenders in the commission of the crime.

7. 2 DIMENSIONS FROM MULTIPLE CORRESPONDENCE ANALYSIS

8. COERCIVE SCRIPT: HOME-INTRUSION RAPE TRACK (CLUSTER 3) • Hunt through local visibility (victim ’s residence); • Encounter, attack, commit, and release the victim at the same location, only familiar to the victim; • “Hunter” hunting style & “Raptor” attack method; • Physical violence is used to approach and commit the crime but offenders use threats in order to bring victim to crime site

9. COERCIVE SCRIPT: OUTSIDE RAPE TRACK (CLUSTER 1 & 2) • Hunt for a victim who is alone through a direct attack or an ambush; • A_C_VR sites are all outside locations; • E & A = same location, usually familiar to both of them; • VR = place familiar to offender / Outside private • Hunter/Raptor hunting style; but kidnapping the victim; • Threat/physical violence = approach the victim and to commit the crime • Use of only physical violence to bring victim to crime site

10. MANIPULATIVE SCRIPT: SOPHISTICATED RAPE TRACK (CLUSTER 5) • Hunt for victims through an occupation/prostitution market; • Troller/Ambusher hunting style; • Use of seduction, trick, and games to approach & bring victim to crime site; • Encounter in a public place; attack and commit the crime in an inside private location only familiar to them; • VR happens in an outside public location, usually the same as the encounter; • Offenders use money/gift to commit the crime

11. MANIPULATIVE SCRIPT: FAMILY-INFILTRATOR RAPE TRACK (CLUSTER 6) • Hunt by infiltrating a family/using their occupation to gain access to victims; • Victims = usually not alone; • E_A_C_VR = same inside private location, only familiar to the offender; • Strategy of giving money/gift or others use drugs/alcohol to approach, bring the victim to crime site and commit the crime.

12. NON-PERSUASIVE SCRIPT: DIRECT ACTION RAPE TRACK (CLUSTER 4) • Hunt through a local visibility; • E_A_C_VR = same location, usually an inside public place; • No specific hunting style but act directly on the victim to approach, bring to crime site and commit the crime; • Little or no investment from the offender; • No sophistication in the crime

13. SCRIPTS OF HUNTING PROCESS & GEOGRAPHIC PROFILING

14. CONCLUSION • Importance of geographic variables in the hunting process of serial sex offenders; • Such results also demonstrate that target selection is highly dependent on the physical environment (Canter & Larkin, 1993); • The identified scripts permit us to appreciate the interaction between the behavioral and geographic aspect of criminal behavior; • This interaction between the behavioral and geographic components of the crime is an eloquent illustration of the very nature of the rational choice model of crime: it emphasizes the interactional, transactional, and adaptive nature of human behavior;

15. CONTACT DETAILS Eric Beauregard, Ph.D. Assistant Professor Department of Criminology University of South Florida 4202 E. Fowler Avenue, SOC107 Tampa, Florida, 33620-8100 USA Phone: (813) 974-9907 Fax: (813) 974-2803 Email: ebeaureg@cas.usf.edu