Abstract A study of the process of offender profiling reveals various stages involved in the generation of a profile as well as the way in which the profile is incorporated in the investigation of the concerned law enforcement agency. This paper traces the development of the process from the time when offender profiling first started being utilized by law enforcement agencies and how it evolved into the formal and specialized way of investigation that it has become now. Further, the validity and usefulness of offender profiling has been questioned in recent times. The author has attempted to analyze the reliability of a profile in the context of these contentions and the paper recommends measures that could improve reliability of the profile and allow for a more efficient and neutral investigation. Key Words: Offender Profiling, Profiling Approach, Profiling Process Introduction Initially offender profiles were created informally, in the sense that they were based more on intuition, experience and reasoning than on psychology or criminology. Informal criminal profiling has a long history. It was used as early as the 1880s, when two physicians, George Phillips and Thomas Bond, used crime scene clues to make predictions about British serial murderer Jack the Ripper's personality. In 1974, the FBI formed its Behavioral Science Unit to investigate serial rape and homicide cases. From 1976 to 1979, several FBI agents developed theories and categories of different types of offenders. Over the past quarter-century, the Behavioral Science Unit has further developed the FBI's profiling process--including refining the organized/disorganized dichotomy into a continuum and developing other classification schemes. Offender profiling is grounded in the belief that it is possible to work out the characteristics of an offender by examining the characteristics of their offences. Profiling cannot tell police exactly who committed an offence, but it potentially can make predictions about the characteristics an offender is likely to possess. Offender profiling has been defined in many ways by experts of varied professions such as psychological profiling, criminal profiling, criminal investigative analysis, crime scene analysis, behavioral profiling, criminal personality profiling, criminological profiling etc. Offender profiling can be simply defined as a crime investigation technique, wherein information is collected from the crime scene, witnesses, victims, and autopsy reports to create a profile of the kind of person who is likely to have committed the crime. It is important to note that offender profiling does not pinpoint to a specific person. Offender profiling is based on the probability that a person with certain characteristics is likely to have committed a certain type of crime. The question which lies at the heart of criminal profiling is “what kind of people carry out what kind of actions.” It is a technique which aids or compliments the regular investigative procedure. It is particularly useful when the offender leaves no traces at the crime scene. Canter (1994) sees offender profiling as ‘criminal shadows’. He maintained that a criminal “leaves psychological traces, tell-tale patterns of behavior that indicate the sort of person he is. Gleaned from the crime scene and reports from witnesses, these traces are more ambiguous and subtle than those examined by the biologist or physicist. They cannot be taken into a laboratory and dissected under the microscope. They are more like shadows, which undoubtedly are connected to the criminal who cast them, but they flicker and change, and it may not always be obvious where they come from. Yet, if they can be fixed and interpreted, criminal shadows can indicate where investigators should look and what sort of person they should be looking for. The following paper attempts to understand offender profiling and analyze its usefulness and validity in the context of law enforcement and forensic psychology. It discusses the approaches and processes involved in the generation of a profile after the commission of a crime, who can generate it, the stages involved in the generation. It goes on to critique the validity of the process and recommends measures to be taken to reduce the risk of a misdirected investigation by an incorrect profile to increase efficiency of the investigation process. It further discusses the potential for an expansion of the ambit of offender profiling to other types of crimes. Methodology This paper has relied on meta-analysis to study offender profiling. Meta-analysis refers to contrasting and combining results from different studies to reach conclusions. This paper has analyzed the existing studies with respect to offender profiling. The author has attempted to compare this existing literature to deduce the results. Purpose of Offender Profiling Criminal profiling is used mostly by behavioral scientists and the police to narrow down