Psychological criminal profiling.

[Shell B]

Are there enough black serial killers to make the phrase 'most serial killers are white males' untrue?

I don't know.  One site I found listed a couple dozen or so black serial killers (I didn't count them).  Are they disproportionately white?  Perhaps, but do the numbers justify drawing conclusion about a hypothetical serial killer's race?  I think not.

Which is what I said. I did not say they should racially profile. I said the opposite.

Yes, according to what I've read from experts, they are disproportionately white. That could have to do with socioeconomic factors more than it has to do with race. Who knows? I sincerely doubt it has anything to do with actually being white, but there are more white serial killers than black serial killers.

---

Interestingly, I find a number of different definitions for the term at any given time, so it depends on that as well. In this list compiled of the percentage of serial killers in any given decade, I find it curious to note that the number of black serial killers has gone up as the definition has changed to mean any person who kills more than one person in separate events. For example, if I shoot someone tomorrow and then shoot someone a month from now, I'm a serial killer by that definition. Earlier on, the term meant something very different. Personally, I think the definition they use in this paper is far too lax. It would mean Aaron Hernandez is a serial killer. I think the average person makes a distinction between gang and serial killings. However, even with the shift in definition, more than half of serial killers are white.

http://maamodt.asp.radford.edu/Serial%20...istics.pdf

ETA: The average IQ of a serial killer is 6 points less than average, if I'm reading that correctly. That's worth noting as well. Also, they said the lowest IQ for a serial killer was 54. Imagine being serial killed by someone that stupid? For some reason, being killed by an evil drooling moron throws me off more.

[Jackalope]

That comment wasn't really addressing anything you said, Shell.

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It occurs to me that I don't have access to the kind of information that would make analyzing this any more than an opinion-based crap shoot. I'm not entirely certain that the statistics don't mirror general demographics. I did find an article from Scientific American that claimed such "The racial diversity of serial killers generally mirrors that of the overall U.S. population." However, it's not a scholarly article (it's an excerpt from a book), and the particular statement is not sourced.

(It also made the interesting claim that while women account for ~10% of homicides, they account for ~17% of serial homicides. That one is at least sourced, no idea on the quality of the source though.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/artic...t-excerpt/

[Rev. Rye]

I'm a big fan of serial killer documentaries

Immediately, I thought of these two:

Fuck yeah, Psychoville!

Also, something I've come to figure out about criminal profiling is that, until they actually catch the killer, it's really no more useful than any other kind of cold reading, like that time there was a sniper in Washington DC, and people thought it was a white supremacist killer and it turned out to be a pair of black guys and nobody seems to be fully aware of why they did it in the first place?

[Shell B]

I think if they include poisoning and Black Widow style murders, women tend toward that sort of thing and I'm not surprised. You also have women who kill their offspring, as fucking horrendous as that is, over the course of many years.

I prefer this definition from Wikipedia for serial killers, "A serial killer is typically a person who murders three or more people,[1] usually in service of abnormal psychological gratification, with the murders taking place over more than a month and including a significant break (a "cooling off period") between them." because if we're just saying anyone who kills more than one person is a serial killer, the term loses all meaning. While it is accurate semantically, I think we need the distinction because there is something fundamentally different when the murderer is killing and eating or killing and fucking his victims, wouldn't you say?

"The racial diversity of serial killers generally mirrors that of the overall U.S. population."

Only from my research over years, which it would be impossible to source since it's just been years of reading shit, I don't think that's accurate. Even the decent paper I turned up with the stupid new FBI definition showed a higher percentage of white perpetrators than there are white people in general in the United States. We're not all that white these days. I'm not sure I'd attribute it to race, though. Really, I think it has something to do with means, culture, etc. Maybe black people are more prone to shootings because of gang culture and white people are more prone to serial killings because of unrealistic porn. /kidding I have no clue what could be the cause of it, but I do know it has nothing to do with actually being white or black.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Boru

[Mr.Obvious]

I don't know.  One site I found listed a couple dozen or so black serial killers (I didn't count them).  Are they disproportionately white?  Perhaps, but do the numbers justify drawing conclusion about a hypothetical serial killer's race?  I think not.

Which is what I said. I did not say they should racially profile. I said the opposite.

Yes, according to what I've read from experts, they are disproportionately white. That could have to do with socioeconomic factors more than it has to do with race. Who knows? I sincerely doubt it has anything to do with actually being white, but there are more white serial killers than black serial killers.

---

Interestingly, I find a number of different definitions for the term at any given time, so it depends on that as well. In this list compiled of the percentage of serial killers in any given decade, I find it curious to note that the number of black serial killers has gone up as the definition has changed to mean any person who kills more than one person in separate events. For example, if I shoot someone tomorrow and then shoot someone a month from now, I'm a serial killer by that definition. Earlier on, the term meant something very different. Personally, I think the definition they use in this paper is far too lax. It would mean Aaron Hernandez is a serial killer. I think the average person makes a distinction between gang and serial killings. However, even with the shift in definition, more than half of serial killers are white.

http://maamodt.asp.radford.edu/Serial%20...istics.pdf

ETA: The average IQ of a serial killer is 6 points less than average, if I'm reading that correctly. That's worth noting as well. Also, they said the lowest IQ for a serial killer was 54. Imagine being serial killed by someone that stupid? For some reason, being killed by an evil drooling moron throws me off more.

I don't know. I haven't seen the numbers  enough to be certain. So you could be right that there is some disproportion. But In a country with about 60% caucasians, wouldn't you expect to find most serial killers are white? In the source you provided, I don't see the tables being presented as relative frequency of serial killers, in accordance to the size of the subgroup. Meaning that I'm more prone to see it as absolute numbers. In which case a larger absolute frequency in a single subgroup may still not be disproportionate if it's the biggest subgroup..
Also, just glancing in the source you gave, isn't a serial killer someone who kills three or more people in a specific fashion or tied to a specific pattern, in seperate events? Rather than:

The unlawful killing of two or more victims by the same offender(s), in seperate events.

Edit: I missed, somehow, in your post that you too agree their definition is off. Apologies.

And then on page ten, it says:

As can be seen in this table, the commonly cited profile of a serial killer in the U.S. being a white, male, in his mid twenties is not accurate.

According to the table, most seem to be male. But only 52.5% seem to be white. In a country with 60% whites, that is not disproportionate. And definitely not in exhuberant fashion. If anything, it's less than we'd expect. Of course, it could still be there are relatively 60% or higher white serial killers in the grander serial killer population. But that they are more apt at getting away with it because they, on average, have more means to (as whites in America are relatively less poor and might very well be concidered less as possible killers through bias or there might be other things at play.) Or maybe not. Dark numbers are hard to work with.

So on the whole, I don't think that source builds your case. (Edit: ) Also because of the too vague definition. I don't think the Numbers comparing serial Killers and coming up with relatively less in the White subgroup are even accurately comparing 'serial killers'.

(Edit: I found an old source saying 61% in America were whites. But it turns out, another source maybe with a different definition, says it's up to 77% I don't know the exact number, though they seem to be the majority.)

[Shell B]

And then on page ten, it says:

As can be seen in this table, the commonly cited profile of a serial killer in the U.S. being a white, male, in his mid twenties is not accurate.

According to the table, most seem to be male. But only 52.5% seem to be white. In a country with 60% whites, that is not disproportionate. And definitely not in exhuberant fashion. If anything, it's less than we'd expect. Of course, it could still be there are relatively 60% or higher white serial killers in the grander serial killer population. But that they are more apt at getting away with it because they, on average, have more means to (as whites in America are relatively less poor and might very well be concidered less as possible killers through bias or there might be other things at play.) Or maybe not. Dark numbers are hard to work with.

So on the whole, I don't think that source builds your case. (Edit: ) Also because of the too vague definition. I don't think the Numbers comparing serial Killers and coming up with relatively less in the White subgroup are even accurately comparing 'serial killers'.

(Edit: I found an old source saying 61% in America were whites. But it turns out, another source maybe with a different definition, says it's up to 77% I don't know the exact number, though they seem to be the majority.)

If you look at what I was citing, you'll see that the proportion of white to black serial killers has changed in recent decades. Several decades ago, it was something like 70+% were white. I posited that this is because the FBI's current definition has not always been in use. The man who coined the term meant it to describe people who got some sort of sexual pleasure out of killing, the cooling off period, etc. I cited this study specifically because I thought it called into question all of the things we've been discussing, not because I thought it built a solid case for anything.

Let's take South Africa for example, about 1 in 10 people are white in South Africa. Yet, most of their serial killers are white.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_se...uth_Africa

I've also realized that here we have the unusual problem of sorting out whether Hispanics who identify as white are counted as white or Hispanic in these studies. It's all quite convoluted. Still, I think we all concede the point that racial profiling is problematic. I simply personally think you're more likely to be looking for a white dude if you're looking for a serial killer, depending of course on the M.O., which can often point to a woman.

[Mr.Obvious]

And then on page ten, it says:

According to the table, most seem to be male. But only 52.5% seem to be white. In a country with 60% whites, that is not disproportionate. And definitely not in exhuberant fashion. If anything, it's less than we'd expect. Of course, it could still be there are relatively 60% or higher white serial killers in the grander serial killer population. But that they are more apt at getting away with it because they, on average, have more means to (as whites in America are relatively less poor and might very well be concidered less as possible killers through bias or there might be other things at play.) Or maybe not. Dark numbers are hard to work with.

So on the whole, I don't think that source builds your case. (Edit: ) Also because of the too vague definition. I don't think the Numbers comparing serial Killers and coming up with relatively less in the White subgroup are even accurately comparing 'serial killers'.

(Edit: I found an old source saying 61% in America were whites. But it turns out, another source maybe with a different definition, says it's up to 77% I don't know the exact number, though they seem to be the majority.)

If you look at what I was citing, you'll see that the proportion of white to black serial killers has changed in recent decades. Several decades ago, it was something like 70+% were white. I posited that this is because the FBI's current definition has not always been in use. The man who coined the term meant it to describe people who got some sort of sexual pleasure out of killing, the cooling off period, etc. I cited this study specifically because I thought it called into question all of the things we've been discussing, not because I thought it built a solid case for anything.

Let's take South Africa for example, about 1 in 10 people are white in South Africa. Yet, most of their serial killers are white.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_se...uth_Africa

I've also realized that here we have the unusual problem of sorting out whether Hispanics who identify as white are counted as white or Hispanic in these studies. It's all quite convoluted. Still, I think we all concede the point that racial profiling is problematic. I simply personally think you're more likely to be looking for a white dude if you're looking for a serial killer, depending of course on the M.O., which can often point to a woman.

Even if they were 70% back then, I don't think it would be disproportianate in the US.
Looking at Wikipedia, but seeing it's sources check out at first glance, the subgroup size seems to be congruent. Whites went from almost 90% of the US population to 72% of the population in the last century. Agreed that the 'Non hispanic white' has me for a loop, looking at it at surface value. But that has declined from almost 90% to 63%. This last one would even be perfectly proportionate to the findings in the first source.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical...erenceB-17 )
(https://www.census.gov/population/www/do...ps0076.pdf )
But yes, I agree. That first source is a bit vague and doesn't seem to fit what you or I would concider a serial killer, so I don't think that first source would be reliable.

Regarding serial killers in South Africa, however. The only source I can find saying it's disproportionate all is a single article on IOL, which is referenced in your Wikipedia link. This one: http://www.iol.co.za/news/crime-courts/m...es-1766044 . Problem however is that when I looked at it, it seemed to be just one mention without reference to sources and not even a mention of how big the sample size is or how big the disproportion. This kind of thing doesn't bode well for the validity of the claim.

That's why when looking a bit deeper, I found the following on this: http://www.news24.com/MyNews24/South-Afr...s-20150113

A recent article titled “Most SA serial killers are white males” is an example of media propagating this myth.  Although it went on to say that “proportionally more white men are serial killers than any other racial group”, the heading was clearly misleading and could be argued that it was deliberate considering that only 1 in 5 readers go on to read the full article.
Of the total number of convicted serial killers in South Africa, approximately 7 in 10 are black, 1 in 10 are coloured and 2 in 10 are white, an overrepresentation.  But these are historical figures.  Earlier I mentioned that there has been a clear racial shift post-Apartheid which I’d like to explain by using ratios of white serial killers to total serial killers over a series of time periods:
·         Convicted white serial killers - pre 1994– 5 in 10
·         Convicted white serial killers 1995 to 2004 – 2 in 10
·         Convicted white serial killers 2005 to date – 1 in 10
·         Convicted white serial killers 2009 to date – 0 in 10

Now, the above source doesn't link to the propper sources either. So it might be pulling stuff out of it's ass for all I know. But if we say that, we have to conced that possibility of the Original IOL source as well. The news24 source does seems to agree, however, that the south african serial killers were 'historically' unproportionaltly white.
But seeing as this South African  story seems at best to be an anomaly, I think it's important to keep an open mind on the possible explanations behind this number. It could be, as your hypothesis says, that there is some underlying difference in lifestyle. Personally, I find it more likely and more in line with the known data in other countries and population groups, that there is some fault in the measurement of the data. I can for instance imagine South Africa having less than stellar forensics departments in comparison to Western countries, creating a basis for faulty measurement. If, in addition to that, the white population is richer and more powerful, they might also historically get/got more devotion of the police corps, giving them disproportionate time and effort in examining the cases. Perhaps a black serial killer operating in a black ghetto in South Africa has/had less chance of getting caught because the police corps investigate less of their time and effort in bringing the murderer of 'poor folk' to justice. It's just a working hypothesis, but I find it more in line seeing as South Africa seems to be the only 'outlier'.

According to this source, which I can't claim it's validity either, on page 43 it says in South Africa serial killers are primarily black:
https://books.google.nl/books?id=HoWMab7...te&f=false
Which could still leave open a disproportionatly high white-serial killer rate in South Africa. But it doesn't mention it. And seeing the above, I kind of doubt it.

What it does mention is that in primarily black communities, serial killers tend to be black, in primarily hispanic, they tend to be hispanic, ... And

The only reason most serial killers in the United States are white is because most of the population in the United States is white.

Racial profiling at this point would be as useful, it seems to me, as going to China and investigating a serial killer there and working off the assumption that the killer probably has black hair. It's probably true, but with a larger subgroup, it doesn't help your investigation either. Profiling would only 'work' if your subgroup you focus on is smaller, it seems to me. You probably are looking for a male, because about 90% of serial killers are male and only 50% of the population is male. If 95% of your population has black hair, however, saying the serial killer is most like to have black hair doesn't help your case. Same goes for skin color.

[Shell B]

Yeah, it doesn't seem like any of these sources is reliable. Also, given that the definition varies so widely that it would be next to impossible to get a reasonable list together of what we would consider a serial killer versus what the FBI would consider a serial killer today. It's obvious to me that the looser definition that neither of us likes would certainly contain a group proportionate to the population, which will only ever be what we have to go on, since no one keeps a list of just Ted Bundys apparently. Also, if say we realized that there were fewer serial killers in China for example, would that mean it's because there are fewer white males? Impossible to know. In my opinion, it's best to look for people based on other factors.