Forensic Psycolgy Flashcards
What is offender profiling?
Using investigative and psychological techniques to try and identify Perpetrators of a serious crime
What are the two different approaches of offender profiling?
Top down approach
bottom up approach
What is the top down approach and how was it developed?
The top down approach is the more American method of profiling criminals it mostly relies on the ability and expertise of the profiler this method was developed by the FBI in the 70s after interviewing 36 serious criminals most of who where serial killers and from this they created 2 broad categories that criminals can be placed in based on their patterns and crimes
What are the four stages of the top down approach ?
- Profiling inputs
- Decision process model
- Classification of crime
- Criminal profile
First stage of the top down approach ?
Profiling imputes
What happens in the 1st stage (profiling inputs stage) of the top down approach ?
Specialists collect forensic evidence and information from the crime scene and put together a portfolio
Second stage of the top down approach ?
Decision process model
What happens in the 2nd stage (decision process model) of the top down approach ?
The data collected from the crime scene is used to make more assumptions about specifics of the crime like the time of day or murder weapon or type of crime
What kind of assumptions are made in the decision process model?
. time of day
. Type of crime
. Murder weapon
Third stage of the top down approach ?
Classifying the crime
What happens in the 3rd stage (classifying the crime ) of the top down approach ?
Professional profilers look at the evidence and determine wether the killer is organised or disorganised based on evidence from the crime scene and intuition from the expert professional experiences
Fourth stage of the top down approach ?
Criminal profile
What happens in the 4th stage (criminal profile) of the top down approach ?
Based on the classification of the criminal, organised or disorganised the experts create a profile of the most likely suspect and what their personal life will be like based on this.
What are the two classifications the top down approach puts offenders in ?
Organised
Disorganised
Top down approach - what is an organised crime scene or crime like?
. Very little forensic evidence
. Planned crime
. Indented victim
. Murder weapon and body in different places
Top down approach - what is an disorganised crime scene or crime like?
. Lots of forensic evidence
. Impulsive crime normally one that’s a spur of the moment or emotional crime
. Murder weapon and body same place
Top down approach - explain the difference between an organised and disorganised offenders personal life ?
organised offenders normally have high social status and good personal life and stable job good car in working order, whereas disorganised offender are the opposite.
Supporting evidence of top down offender profiling ?
Copson 1995 - interviewed 184 police officers about this approach
Found that 82% said they found it useful
And 90% said they would use it again.
Strengths of top down method ?
Makes use of expertise - since it’s based on intuition it makes use of the experience and knowledge of the profilers who job it is to make deductions this couldn’t be done by statical models
Evidence against top down approach ?
Alison et al 2003 - controlled study found over 50% of officers who rated the profile they were asked to give as accurate even though their profiler was different to the real offender
What does Alison et al 2003 show about the top down approach ?
How inaccurate it is, human error statistics don’t make this mistake.
Other weaknesses about the top down approach ?
. It is based on flawed evidence so the whole basis of this method is 36 interviews of criminals how can this be accurate most criminals are pathological liars and manipulators
Meaning it is therefore unscientific
Top down approach- Criticism of organised and disorganised categories?
+ evidence
Two distinct categories is not a good approach Generalises to much
David canter et al 2004 - Analyse, 39 aspects of serial killing murders in US commited by 100 killers shows no clear division instead found Subsets.
What is the bottom up approach to offender profiling?
This approach is a more statical based method it was developed by David canter after he analysed 39 aspects of serial killings of 100 US killers found the no distinct categories he then found a different approach to offender profiling where in order to profile the cases needed to be statistically analysed.
Main two methods that the bottom up approach uses ?
Investigative psychology
Geographical profiling
Bottom up approach - What are the three subsections of investigative psychology?
- Interpersonal coherence
- Forensic awareness
- Small space analysis
Bottom up approach - What is the first part of investigative psychology?
Interpersonal coherence
Bottom up approach - What is interpersonal coherence?
People are consistent, human nature is predictable so the crimes usually reflect the offenders usual behaviour this is knowing the correlation between the crime and what the offender may do in their day to day life.
Bottom up approach - What is the second part of investigative psychology?
Forensic awareness
Bottom up approach - What is forensic awareness?
How well the criminal covered their crimes could indicate previous convictions or how well they knew what they where doing so possible prior crimes or awareness of police Techniques
Bottom up approach - What is the third part of investigative psychology?
Smallest space analysis
Bottom up approach - What is smallest space analysis?
The three themes in murder David canter developed this technique data about many crime scenes and offender characteristics are correlated Common connections need to be identified so three subsections that analysis of crimes can put a crime into
Bottom up approach - three themes of smallest space analysis?
- Instrumental opportunistic
- Instrumental cognitive
- Expressive impulsive
Bottom up approach- First theme of small space analysis?
Instrumental Opportunistic
Bottom up approach - what is Instrumental Opportunistic
When the was a goal of the crime but it was unplanned hence
Instrumental - played for before crime knew what crime as gonna be
Oppontisic - crime of opportunity so unplanned
Bottom up approach- second theme of small space analysis?
Instrumental cognitive
Bottom up approach - what is Instrumental cognitive?
With or for a goal but planned
Instrumental - played for goal know
Cognitive - thought it though it’s a plan
Bottom up approach- third theme of small space analysis?
Expressive impulsive
Bottom up approach - what is expressive impulsive?
A head of the moment crime
What is the second method the bottom up approach uses ?
Geographical profiling
Bottom up approach - what are the two parts of geographical profiling?
Circle theory
Criminal geographic targeting
Bottom up approach - First part of geographical profiling?
Circle theory
Bottom up approach - what is circle theory ?
This is the theory that offenders commit crimes within a small radius either where they live or in a place they know well these two types are called -
marauders - where they live (remember it like marauders live at Hogwarts and that’s where they play tricks)
Commuter - this type travel they know the place well but don’t live that near like marauders do