A s well as an estimated 80, prostitutes, this country has a surprisingly large number of shadowy individuals whose profession is described in a variety of ways, from the colloquial "real-life Cracker", to the flexible "reader in personality", more formal "criminal psychologist" and catch-all "profiler" or "leading criminologist". Between lurid criminal events, little may be heard from these individuals, as they ply their trade in obscure corners of the semi-academic world.
Indeed, in the absence of eye-catching crimes, some of these experts on the deviant mind may struggle to survive, diversifying into comments on football and celebrity, stress and compulsive shopping. In recent days, however, many of these men have been restored to prominence and prosperity by the murders in Suffolk.
It has become a media convention that the most atrocious crimes should not just be reported, but analysed by scholarly experts. Once a new perpetrator had come to light, it was, for example, only a matter of time before the Daily Mail's consultant, Colin Wilson "leading criminologist" , came up with a clinical assessment: "he probably used local knowledge to conceal the bodies before dumping two of them in a stream". Such has been the demand for skilled, academic input that the Daily Telegraph was forced to send out for a contribution from Dr Joseph Diaz, of Fayetteville State University, who announced, by way of credentials, that he had "witnessed executions".
This point was also stressed in the Sun by Dr Glenn Wilson, of the University of London "The killer seems to have embarked on a rampage" and by David Wilson, professor of criminology at the University of Central England conclusion: "This is a man who is now capable of anything". Occasionally described as "the real Cracker", Professor David Canter is probably the most celebrated of these working men and is surely the most prolific, contributing not only to the News of the World, where he was appointed resident "crime expert", but to more scholarly tabloids such as the Times.
In the first of two commentaries on the Suffolk case he stressed that investigative psychologists now prefer to be called "behavioural investigative analysts".
