The Original Crime Scripts

Source: Photo by K. Ramsland

Problem-oriented policing involves devising analytics to better grasp a problem and create an effective response. In 1994, Derek Cornish introduced a method called crime scripting, which relies on Rational Choice Theory to develop detailed narratives of how offenders think, make decisions, and behave. The goal of this approach is to be able to lay out the sequence of acts that offenders must complete to commit a crime. Investigators can then identify points for intervention.

Adams (2024) states, "Analysts have applied crime scripting to vandalism, terrorism, child sexual abuse, theft, stolen goods-vending, human trafficking, sexual offenses, cyber-dependent crimes, and cyber-enabled crimes. Commentators have argued that all goal-based crimes could be mapped through crime script analysis, including both instrumental and expressive crimes." It can be done with individual or multiple offenders. To complete a script, analysts move through a series of standard questions about such things as steps for preparation, required tools, motivational factors, risks, and enforcement conditions.

Yet this notion isn't that recent. Crime scripting was undertaken a century earlier in the form of criminal autobiographies. It wasn't as structured, with specific types of questions, but it had the same focus and purpose.

Since the nineteenth century, criminologists have focused on factors that seem to set an individual on a violent path. Around 1830, they began to collectively systematize their knowledge in professional journals. Later that century, French pathologist Alexandre Lacassagne instigated “criminal autobiographies,” hoping to use these narratives from the offenders themselves to identify criminogenic factors. These included family influences and the environment. Although self-report has limitations, it can be data-rich, especially when coupled with observation and official crime reports. Lacassagne published many of these narratives for his colleagues to view.

In 1930, Karl Berg extensively interviewed serial rapist and murderer Peter Kürten before his execution. Kürten confessed freely, which became the basis for Berg’s work, Der Sadist, a model for other professionals. Kürten had changed his weapon, MO, routine, and victim type, and had even gone dormant for a while. He described for Berg his decision-making process, his errors, his “hidden” crimes, and the life circumstances that had thwarted or triggered him.

Inspired by Lacassagne and Berg, I spent nearly five years working closely with the “B.T.K.” serial killer, Dennis Rader, using their models to develop questions to guide his life story. My goal was to provide insight for law enforcement, criminologists, and psychologists.

There’s a clear difference between the facts of a case and the way killers tell their story. Lacassagne and Berg both noted this. They retrieved important information about motives, pre- and post-crime behavior, fantasies, compartmentalized personalities, and the role of mental deviance and disorder.

I also benefited from the “data-mining” approach I’d learned from nineteenth century Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard. In Concluding Unscientific Postscript, he described the difference between the what and the how of a person's narrative and showed how they interacted: “An existing individual is constantly in process of becoming; the actual existing subjective thinker constantly reproduces this existential situation in his thoughts and translates all his thinking into terms of process.” In other words, the way people relate to their world and their self-narrative reveals as much about who they are as does the narrative’s content.

Even those offenders who make an honest effort to study themselves, these theorists discovered, cannot fully grasp their experience. They will inevitably have blind spots. Within these blind spots are traits and behaviors that can assist with crime mapping. There is more to an offender’s story than what they might tell us, no matter how verbal. As I worked on giving Rader his voice for an autobiographical book about his crimes, Confession of a Serial Killer, I watched for subtle aspects of his personality that he didn’t see. This revealed more about his motivation and decision-making than was evident in his words.

Crime-scripting offers an effective tool for criminology and law enforcement, and studying the earliest efforts within this frame adds substance and data from earlier cases. These studies, if sufficiently detailed and corroborated, can be mapped according to the crime script protocols.