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When most of us were children, we were given the familiar, yet disturbing admonition against accepting candy from strangers. I remember not comprehending why this was an unwise thing to do, and I also remember not having the foggiest notion of what a "stranger" was. My imagination took care of that: a stranger must be that "bogeyman" who came in the night to steal bad young children from their beds. I knew I definitely wouldn't be taking any candy from him!
These days, children (and adults) are presented with similar warnings about the bogeymen among us, but with a most intriguing twist. We're told that "strangers" are "anyone you don't know," anyone who hasn't passed one's personal tests of trustworthiness. In the 1990s all men - all people - are potential bogeymen. Anyone has the potential to do us great harm. If true, we need all be on constant vigil, keeping our antennae high in hopes of spotting the invisible enemy. Ted Kaczynski could be any old hobo in a cabin just waiting for his chance to blow us to smithereens. If only there were a way, some way, to point out the beasts who haunt our dreams, to make ourselves feel at ease in a world experienced as increasingly insecure.
Over the past twenty years, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has developed a forensic methodology which is intended to accomplish the impossible: a means of identifying a killer, rapist, mad bomber, molester or arsonist without the need of any physical identification or evidence tying the perpetrator to any particular crime. Criminal profiling involves creating a list of typical personal, psychological, and behavioral characteristics associated with known perpetrators of particular kinds of crimes. The successful feature film Silence of the Lambs was completed in consultation with John Douglas, one of the FBI's leading "profilers." And this past Saturday evening, a brand-new prime-time television series called "Profiler" debuted on NBC. Its central character is an FBI profiler who's talents are so powerful - and nearly other-worldy - that they've made her the target of a serial killer (who oddly enough, turns out to be female. You just never know). Criminal profiling, as practiced by the FBI and other law enforcement agencies, is viewed by its practitioners as both a science and art. Douglas, for one, boasts of his conquests in the field as if he were a winning contestant on Jeopardy. The capture, arrest and conviction of Wayne Williams during the spree of child murders in Atlanta in the early 1980s served only to enforce Douglas's sense of self-affirmation: the suspect fit his profile and the jury believed Douglas; therefore Wayne Williams was the primary killer. (Although the FBI made sure to point out to the low-income African American community which was victimized by the spree that some of the murders were domestic. Of course they had no actual evidence to support this claim; it simply fit the profile.)
Since the demonizing of an Atlanta-area security guard named Richard Jewell (who was accused by the FBI of having some involvement in this summer's Centennial Park bombing in Atlanta during the Olympic Games), criminal profiling has finally come to the attention of an intrigued public. The FBI apparently has no physical evidence or eyewitness testimony against Jewel. He nevertheless remains a suspect. The reason? He fits the profile of such a bomber. He's a police groupie who hasn't been successful in a law-enforcement career, he was the first person to find the package, and, of course, he lives with his mom. Kind of a sad sack. No girlfriend. And he likes to go hunting. What else could the FBI do? Did it matter that a voice print analysis failed to conclude that he made a 911 call warning park officials of the bomb before it went off? And did it make a difference that it was nearly impossible for the caller to have made it to Jewell's position in the park in time for him to alert others to the presence of the package? Of course not. What did matter was that Jewell looked like the individual whom they were seeking and that was enough. Profilers, after all, are brilliant - and now glamorous. How could they miss?
As one might expect, most of the news media immediately jumped into the case with their own ad-hock profiles. Jewell had a "hero-complex," they theorized. It was just a matter of finding a little physical evidence to please a jury and everyone would be happy. The case would be closed and our massive social anxiety quelled. The profilers will protect us from the bogeymen in our midst. They'd protect us from "anyone we don't know." That was all that was needed in 1981 in Atlanta, after all. A few carpet fibers that seemed similar to those on the bodies of two young adult victims. Douglas's testimony was crucial to Wayne Williams's conviction. (Although it's probably sheer coincidence, the first episode of the new NBC series was ironically set in Atlanta, the scene of two of the most egregious abuses of the profiling technique.)
Richard Jewell may be just one dolphin caught in the tuna net of profiling, but it's necessary at this point to ask ourselves if this latest form of witch-hunting has quite literally gone too far. What began as an adjunct to real criminal investigation has supplanted it in many cases. Certainly, the use and abuse of this trendy technique is far more threatening to ordinary people than even the day care abuse panics of the 1980s. In those cases, the testimony (however flawed) of actual living witnesses was used to secure convictions. Many of those convictions were later overturned when closer examination of the children's testimony revealed both internal inconsistencies and scenarios which did not jibe with the state of the physical evidence. When one is convicted on the basis of a profile - which is principally what happened to Wayne Williams (and which could conceivably happen to Jewell) - no such inconsistencies will ever come to light. There are no witnesses; there is no evidence. There is nothing, in fact, but the wisdom and personal charisma of the profiler. Good enough, apparently, because without it, we wouldn't feel as safe.
References
James Baldwin, The Evidence of Things Not Seen. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1985.
John Douglas, Mind Hunter. New York: Scribner, 1995.
Profiler, 1996 NBC television series. Saturdays, 10-11 p.m., EST.
Copyright © 1996 by Robin Markowitz. All Rights Reserved.
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