The FBI's "checklist" looks remarkably like another checklist that I saw in a mass-market magazine, and my reaction was the same for both: "Whoever published this checklist is an idiot."
Trouble is, real criminal profilers don't use checklists. And the FBI oughta know that -- it was their own Robert Ressler who pioneered the science of criminal profiling. (Television brought us a rather good example of criminal profiling Sunday night, on the X-Files, as Frank Black worked a profile for Fox Mulder.)
The trouble with checklists is, as many people have observed here, people who qualify for one point often qualify for lots of others simply because of their lifestyle... and it doesn't indicate anything about their potential criminality. You can't go "Oh, that person scores 8 out of 10 and therefore they're trouble"... it fails dismally. ('course you can predict goths and geeks that way, since Gothness and Geekery are constants, not actions of the moment.)
And what good is a prediction device that DOESN'T WORK? A profiler that accidentally flags innocent people definitely DOESN'T WORK because it wastes your energy targeting and protecting from people who are not a threat. If your purpose is to identify potentially violent people, then it's crucial that you screen out people who are harmless as quickly as possible, regardless of how weird they are. You don't have time to watch them.
Both Robert Ressler and Gavin DeBecker emphasize that context and intuition are keys to predicting violence. People always ask them to reduce it to a checklist, and they reply that it doesn't work that way. (Short of having a master profiler on staff, about the best you can do is automate the task using some sort of expert-system software. Yeah. Mosaic.)
You'd think a checklist about dealing with stalkers would say "Never turn your back to them" and "never get between them and who they're stalking"... but when a stalker was harassing my friend, I did both of those at once. Why? Because I used context and intuition - and certainly not a checklist - to figure out exactly what his threat level and intentions were at the moment. He has potential for violence... but he wasn't going to be violent right then, and I could see that. (I'd also read The Gift of Fear, Gavin DeBecker's great book on threat assessment in everyday life.)
By the way... as regards Gavin DeBecker and Mosaic-2000, I paraphrase the Emir of Kuwait (as re: the United States): "If there is to be one person doing threat assessment software, thank God it is Gavin DeBecker." I believe DeBecker Gets It. He understands the difference between freaks and threats, and he stands the best chance of anyone of developing software which also does. (Remember he's been writing expert-system software for over 10 years, to protect celebs, political figures, judges, battered women... and none of those versions of Mosaic are designed to descriminate against freaks... because his customers for those versions don't have any agenda about ostracizing geeks, they just want their principal protected.)
So if Mosaic-2000 has the same "neutrality" as its predecessors, it could be best friend to freaks, geeks and Goths, because it'll impartially exonerate them, and in so doing, slap school administrators right in the face of their prejudices.
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Trouble is, real criminal profilers don't use checklists. And the FBI oughta know that -- it was their own Robert Ressler who pioneered the science of criminal profiling. (Television brought us a rather good example of criminal profiling Sunday night, on the X-Files, as Frank Black worked a profile for Fox Mulder.)
The trouble with checklists is, as many people have observed here, people who qualify for one point often qualify for lots of others simply because of their lifestyle... and it doesn't indicate anything about their potential criminality. You can't go "Oh, that person scores 8 out of 10 and therefore they're trouble"... it fails dismally. ('course you can predict goths and geeks that way, since Gothness and Geekery are constants, not actions of the moment.)
And what good is a prediction device that DOESN'T WORK? A profiler that accidentally flags innocent people definitely DOESN'T WORK because it wastes your energy targeting and protecting from people who are not a threat. If your purpose is to identify potentially violent people, then it's crucial that you screen out people who are harmless as quickly as possible, regardless of how weird they are. You don't have time to watch them.
Both Robert Ressler and Gavin DeBecker emphasize that context and intuition are keys to predicting violence. People always ask them to reduce it to a checklist, and they reply that it doesn't work that way. (Short of having a master profiler on staff, about the best you can do is automate the task using some sort of expert-system software. Yeah. Mosaic.)
You'd think a checklist about dealing with stalkers would say "Never turn your back to them" and "never get between them and who they're stalking"... but when a stalker was harassing my friend, I did both of those at once. Why? Because I used context and intuition - and certainly not a checklist - to figure out exactly what his threat level and intentions were at the moment. He has potential for violence... but he wasn't going to be violent right then, and I could see that. (I'd also read The Gift of Fear, Gavin DeBecker's great book on threat assessment in everyday life.)
By the way... as regards Gavin DeBecker and Mosaic-2000, I paraphrase the Emir of Kuwait (as re: the United States): "If there is to be one person doing threat assessment software, thank God it is Gavin DeBecker." I believe DeBecker Gets It. He understands the difference between freaks and threats, and he stands the best chance of anyone of developing software which also does. (Remember he's been writing expert-system software for over 10 years, to protect celebs, political figures, judges, battered women... and none of those versions of Mosaic are designed to descriminate against freaks... because his customers for those versions don't have any agenda about ostracizing geeks, they just want their principal protected.)
So if Mosaic-2000 has the same "neutrality" as its predecessors, it could be best friend to freaks, geeks and Goths, because it'll impartially exonerate them, and in so doing, slap school administrators right in the face of their prejudices.