Offender profiling seems to be a pretty dubious exercise to me. It rests on the false notion that you can predict criminal behaviour, or that there are certain kinds of people who commit offences. I've never liked the slogan all men are potential rapists, but in this case it does seem to be justified. Perhaps we ought to make the point that all people are potential criminals. Offender profiling leads inexorably to the authoritarian regulation of people on the basis of what they might do, instead of the liberal position that people can only be punished for what they have done.
As long as society is organised on the basis of the formal freedom of the individual then the possibility of crime still exists. To my mind, awful as it sounds to say so, that's a price worth paying.
-- Jim heartfield