Dictionaries and encyclopedias tend to call it offender profiling or criminal profiling . The second most common name for it is psychological criminal profiling , or simply psychological profiling . The FBI approach produced the name criminal personality profiling .
Criminologists tend to think of it as a type of applied criminology or clinical criminology .
Some people prefer the name sociopsychological profiling , or think of it as a type of behavioral investigative analysis or criminal investigative analysis . Offender profiling is a method of identifying the perpetrator of a crime based on an analysis of the nature of the offense and the manner in which it was committed. Various aspects of the criminal's personality makeup are determined from his or her choice of actions before, during, and after the crime. This information is combined with other pertinent details and physical evidence, and then compared with the characteristics of known personality types and mental abnormalities to develop a practical working description of the offender. Many trace the origins of profiling as far back as the early 1800s with the efforts of criminal anthropologists to relate criminal psychology to physical characteristics of the criminal.