This describes the difference between the U.S. and the U.K's way of using offender profiling.

Consider psychological studies of offender profiling. A definition of offender profiling is often illusive, but a loose description of the term is to identify physical, personality and psychological characteristics of a person based on their offence. The term was coined by the FBI but in Europe it is defined by "attempting to produce a description of the offender on the basis of evidence from the crime scene and other background information" (Stevens, 1995). An example of …showed first 75 words of 895 total…

…showed last 75 words of 895 total…the head and then masturbated over the body. Violent fantasies lead to him taking drugs and drinking excessively and using pornography. The use of these substances acted as a 'facilitator', which enabled him to commit murder. The trauma was then reinforced leading to fantasies again. It became a vicious circle. Geoffrey Dahmer was originally a disorganised murderer, but then, as he tried to control his sexual urges for killing he became more and more organised.