This describes the difference between the U.S. and the U.K's way of using offender profiling.

Consider psychological studies of offender profiling. A definition of offender profiling is often illusive, but a loose description of the term is to identify physical, personality and psychological characteristics of a person based on their offence. The term was coined by the FBI but in Europe it is defined by "attempting to produce a description of the offender on the basis of evidence from the crime scene and other background information" (Stevens, 1995). An example of …

…the head and then masturbated over the body. Violent fantasies lead to him taking drugs and drinking excessively and using pornography. The use of these substances acted as a 'facilitator', which enabled him to commit murder. The trauma was then reinforced leading to fantasies again. It became a vicious circle. Geoffrey Dahmer was originally a disorganised murderer, but then, as he tried to control his sexual urges for killing he became more and more organised.