Forensic profiling

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Forensic profiling is the study of trace evidence in order to develop information which can be used by police authorities. This information can be used to identify suspects and convict them in a court of law.

The term "forensic" in this context refers to "information that is used in court as evidence" (Geradts & Sommer 2006, p. 10). The traces originate from criminal or litigious activities themselves. However traces are information that is not strictly dedicated to the court. They may increase knowledge in broader domains linked to security that deal with investigation, intelligence, surveillance, or risk analysis (Geradts & Sommer 2008, p. 26).

Forensic profiling is different from offender profiling, which only refers to the identification of an offender to the psychological profile of a criminal.

In particular, forensic profiling should refer to profiling in the information sciences sense, i.e., to "The process of 'discovering' correlations between data in data bases that can be used to identify and represent a human or nonhuman subject (individual or group), and/or the application of profiles (sets of correlated data) to individuate and represent a subject or to identify a subject as a member of a group or category" (Geradts & Sommer 2006, p. 41).