Crime laboratory management forum—1976 : edited by Richard H. Fox and Fred Wynbrandt. The Forensic Sciences Foundation Press (11400 Rockville, MAryland 20852), 1976, 267 pp., paperback—$9.00.

Abstract

Cet article part d’une réflexion concernant des écarts importants obtenus chez deux auteurs pionniers dans la question du profilage géographique (D. Canter et K. Rossmo), le premier étant Anglais et le second Canadien. Si leur postulat de base était identique, leurs résultats divergeaient. Nous nous sommes alors intéressés à la question de l’environnement immédiat, les écarts topographiques et l’urbanisme dans ces continents pouvant être une des variables expliquant certaines des différences constatées dans ces comportements et la forme qu’ils revêtaient entre les deux côtés de l’Atlantique. Si le rôle joué par l’environnement primaire, les premières interactions avec les parents, n’est pas négligeable dans le développement psychoaffectif et la constitution de la personnalité d’un individu, nous nous focaliserons à travers ces pages sur la place tenue par l’environnement urbain, au sens premier du terme « environnement », dans les actes d’agressions sexuelles sérielles. La question en filigrane étant de considérer en quoi la perception de l’espace des auteurs d’agressions sexuelles sérielles (AASS), leurs « cartes mentales », dépendrait essentiellement de la culture dans laquelle ils se développent et comment cela pourrait avoir des incidences sur leurs zones « d’action » ? La forme de ce travail est celle d’une revue de la littérature, en partie du fait de la difficulté d’accès à cette population pour des travaux criminologiques. Les illustrations cliniques proviennent soit de ressources personnelles, après modifications des noms, soit livresques. Ce travail ne proposera pas de valeur statistique mais plutôt une hypothèse de réflexion.This article deals about an aspect not taken into consideration often when considering violent sexual offenses. The term “crime scene”, which got widespread into common language, depicts all the elements collected at the place where a crime occurred and which could later become pieces of evidence. However, the place by itself, the link between the offender and the place, the influence of the urban environment and the cultural aspect of it do not receive that much attention in the literature. This paper originates from a comparison of the work of two psychologists specialized within the field of geoprofiling, D. Canter and K. Rossmo, the latter being a Canadian citizen and the former an Englishman. If their postulates were similar, their findings however diverged. If primary caretakers and early interactions are not to be underestimated regarding their roles into the personality development, we will in these pages consider the urban environment by itself in serial sexual offenses.Due to a restricted access to this type of patients, we mainly focused our hypothesis on a literature review and a few patients of ours, met during previous research works. Concepts used in this paper overlap various fields such as psychodynamic, criminology, criminalistics, psycho-sociology and even urbanism. We focused in this paper onto the importance of the culture and the urban concrete environment as probable variables explaining these discrepancies observed into the behavioral patterns and distances covered by Serial Sex Offenders between the two shores of the Atlantic. The underlying question being how their space conception, their “mental maps”, depends of the culture they were bred in and how it could have an incident onto their offense zones?The findings highlight an inherently cultural variation of the spatial conception, but also how the space is built up and integrated between the USA (and all the large and historically “recents” territories) and Europe. American sexual serial offenders are more likely to cover larger distances, almost twice as much than their European counterparts. It seems that our hypothesis is relevant; a cultural distinction may exist on the way spatial environment is perceived and could thus have incidences into the offense patterns.With the development of the E.U., our spatial conceptions as European citizens evolve. Thanks to mass transportation, and the Erasmus programs, it is not uncommon for an Italian individual to study in Scotland or Finland for instance. This is of some importance into how the spatial mobility is becoming more thinkable, and somehow how it induces a shrinkage of the distance into the mental mapping process.