A Further Assessment of “Circle Theory” for Geographic Psychological Profiling
| Published date | 01 April 2002 |
| DOI | 10.1375/acri.35.1.43 |
| Date | 01 April 2002 |
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THE AUSTRALIAN AND NEW ZEALAND JOURNAL OF CRIMINOLOGY
VOLUME 35 NUMBER 1 2002 PP.43–62
Address for correspondence: Dr. Richard N. Kocsis, 16 Lynden Ave, Carlingford NSW 2118,
Australia. Email: richard_kocsis@hotmail.com
A Further Assessment of “Circle Theory”
for Geographic Psychological Profiling
Richard N. Kocsis
Private Practice, Sydney
Ray W. Cooksey
University of New England,Armidale
Harvey J. Irwin
University of New England,Armidale
Greg Allen
NSW Police Service
The Circle theory of environmental range (Canter & Larkin, 1993) has
demonstrated utility for the analysis of the spatial distribution of
serial rape and arson offences, but the theory’s applicability to the crime
of multiple burglary is more equivocal. The present study analysed the
spatial distribution of 58 multiple burglary cases that had occurred in
four Australian rural towns.The marauder pattern of offence that had
been found to accommodate most cases of serial rape and arson was no
more likely than a commuter pattern to characterise multiple burglaries.
Further, among those cases that showed a marauder pattern the circle
theory provided only a relatively vague indication of the location of the
offender’s home base. No correlates of offence pattern were identified.
The utility of the circle theory for geographic psychological profiling in
cases of multiple burglary therefore remains to be demonstrated. The
validity of the theory in this context also was queried. Directional vector
analyses of the data suggested that multiple burglaries tend to lie in a
narrow corridor relative to the offender’s home base, whereas an
assumption of the circle theory implies that these vectors will radiate in
every direction from the home base. Crime investigators therefore
should be discriminating in their application of the circle theory to an
actual case of serial crime.
The objective of this study was to undertake an empirical assessment of Canter
and Larkin’s (1993) circle theory of environmental range in the context of multi-
ple burglaries, that is, a series of burglaries committed by the same offender. The
study was conceptualised as a follow-up to an earlier study by two of the authors
(Kocsis & Irwin, 1997) in which the fit of circle theory to burglary data seemed
somewhat anomalous.
Forensic psychologists and criminologists have long been interested in the
geographical distribution of crimes. Data on the spatial concentration of crimes in
specific urban and rural regions are relevant, for example, to the study of the
dynamics of crime rates (Freeman, Grogger, & Sonstelie, 1996) and to the devel-
opment of social policy initiatives for allocating police and support services in
accordance with demonstrable need (Craglia, Haining, & Wiles, 2000). More
recently, however, the spatial distribution of the offences of the individual crimi-
nal have attracted the attention of researchers in relation to the issue of criminal
psychological profiling.
Psychological profiling is designed to assist police services in their criminal
investigations by utilising information gathered from crime scenes and from
witnesses to generate a biographical profile of the offender, that is, a maximally
specific description of the offender’s behaviour, personality, and demographic
characteristics (Bartol & Bartol, 1994; Egger, 1999). Such offender profiles report-
edly can be helpful in leading to the eventual apprehension of the perpetrator of a
series of offences (Jackson & Bekerian, 1997). A complement to the biographical
type of profile is known as geographic psychological profiling (Rossmo, 1995,
1999), the aim of which is to use offence locations in the prediction of the area in
which an offender resides. That is, the spatial distribution of an offender’s crimes
can sometimes be utilised to provide some indication of the location of the person’s
home base, and this clearly could be of value in efforts to apprehend the offender.
One influential model formulated to guide geographic psychological profiling is
Canter and Larkin’s (1993) circle theory of environmental range. Drawing on the
pioneering work of Brantingham and Brantingham (1981), the basic premise of
circle theory is that the offender’s choice of offence sites typically bears a relation to
the base or “home” from which the person operates. Canter and Larkin’s opera-
tionalisation of this basic premise is encapsulated by three explicit assumptions. The
first assumption is that there is sufficient evidence to suggest the existence of a fixed
base from which an offender might operate. Thus, if there are witness reports or
other data that indicate the offender to be a drifter or a person with no fixed address,
it would be inappropriate to apply circle theory to the offence data. The second
assumption is that there exists some defined area where offences are committed.
Under the circle theory it is this area, termed the criminal range, that is deemed to
have a spatial, and thereby causal, relationship to the geographical coordinates of
the offender’s home. The third assumption is that it is appropriate to operate as
parsimoniously as possible by using the simplest principles of spatial geometry. The
conceptual areas in circle theory therefore are taken to be circular, because a circle
requires the determination of only a radius and no other boundary limitations. In
other words, an offender’s net spatial knowledge around their base (termed the home
range) and the spatial area in which crimes are committed (the criminal range) are
represented by circles in Canter and Larkin’s theory. It is for this reason, of course,
that the approach is termed the circle theory of environmental range.
Under the above assumptions, Canter and Larkin (1993) constructed two
competing models of the spatial distribution of the offences of the individual
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RICHARD N. KOCSIS, RAY W.COOKSEY, HARVEY J. IRWIN, AND GREG ALLEN
THE AUSTRALIAN AND NEW ZEALAND JOURNAL OF CRIMINOLOGY
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