Bottom Up Flashcards
(3 cards)
Evidence to support the investigative theory
A strength of the bottom up approach is that research supports the usefulness of the investigative approach. Copson (1995) reviewed the usefulness of offender profiling in Britain. He conducted a survey using a questionnaire, which
was sent to 184 police officers who had used profilers. He found that 75% of the police officers questioned said that profilers’ advice had been useful. However, only 3% said that the advice
had helped them identify the actual offender (but would still use the method again). This suggests that although the method may not be that useful in actually catching offenders, the slight benefit that it offers makes it worthwhile.
Evidence to support the geographical profiling
Rossmo (1999) is one of the key supporters of geographical profiling and claims that, while it may not solve a crime specifically, it can be
useful in prioritising house to house searches or identifying a geographical area where DNA
could be collected. However, one issue is that it cannot distinguish between, different offenders who commit crimes in the same area, and one single offender. Therefore, it is questionable as to how much more it offers than more traditional policing methods and is also limited by not taking into account the crime/offender behaviour as a whole
Scientific basis
one advantage is that bottom up approaches are considered to be more scientific than the top down approaches. It is grounded in evidence and psychological theory
and is less driven by speculation and hunches. This is because it uses objective statistical techniques and computer analysis. With the aid of advanced artificial intelligence,
investigators are able to manipulate geographical, biographical and psychological data quickly to produce insights and results that assist the investigation. However, such techniques are only as good as the data that is inputted. One issue is that the data that is used to drive such systems is only related to offenders that have been caught, and therefore this tells us little about patterns of behaviour related to unsolved crimes. This means that
although bottom up approaches may have the potential to be objective and scientific, in practice they are inevitably biased
