Forensic Flashcards
(28 cards)
What is offender profiling
‘Criminal profiling’, a behavioural and analytical tool used by professionals to help acuurately predict and profile the characteristics and traits of an unknown criminal.
Main aims of offender profiling
Narrow the field of inquiry, careful scrutiny of the crime scene and analysis of evidence (including witness reports), to generate a hypothesis about the characteristics of the offender.
Where did top down approach originate from?
Created in USA, FBI’s conducted interviews with 36 sexually motivated killers such as Ted Bunny
Aim of top down interviews?
To create a database of common characteristics, patterns or trends to create templates for offenders. AKA the ‘typology approach’. Creates a pre existing template to match what is known about the current crime and offender and fit them to a pre existing template that the FBI has developed.
What are the 2 different types of offenders
Organised and disorganised, criminals are assigned into either 1 of these categories.
5 things that you can use to categorise them
Crime scene, victimology, employment/social, intelligence, childhood.
(organised = inconsistent discipline, disorganised = harsh discipline).
What are the 4 stages in FBI profiling
Data assimilation, crime scene classification, crime reconstruction and profile generation.
Data assimilation
Reviewing all the info (police reports, crime scenes, photographs).
Crime scene classification
Decide whether the crime is organised or disorganised.
Crime reconstruction
Make hypotheses about what happened based on victim behaviour, crime sequences.
Profile generation
Present the profile hypotheses e.g physical characteristics, behavioural habits, background, IQ.
Limitation to top down
Only applies to particular crimes. Best suited to crime scenes which reveal important details about the suspect. EG; rape, arson, macabre and sadistic torture. More common offences such as burglary and destruction of property do not lend themselves to profiling because the resulting crime reveals little about the offender. THEREFORE IS A LIMITED APPROACH.
Another limitation to top down (Alison et al)
Based on outdated models of personality. Based on the assumption that offenders have patterns of behaviour and motivations which remain consistent across situations and contexts.
Alison et all suggested that this approach is naive, that sees behaviour as being driven by stable dispositional characteristics rather than external factors that may be constantly changing.
Therefore poor validity when it comes to identifying possible suspects / predicting next move.
Who said that evidence of top down does not support the disorganised offender
Canter (2004) questioned the organised/disorganised distinction, arguing that there is no evidence for a distinct disorganised type (although he did agree that there are organised features typical to organised serial killers). The aim was to test the validity of the organised/disorganised distinction. The researchers used information from 100 murders by 100 serial killers in the USA. Each case was assessed for the presence of 39 characteristics identified in literature as typical or either organised or disorganised offenders. A subset of organised characteristics was found to be typical of most serial killers, including the body being left in an isolated spot and the use of a restraint. Disorganised characteristics were MUCH rarer and did not occur often enough to be considered a type. There is no clear distinction between organised and disorganised offenders.
What is the bottom up approach
British model; n=does not begin with fixed typologies.
The profile is ‘data driven’ when investigator ‘rigorously scrutinises’ details.
Canter has attempted to move offender profiling into a more scientific and empirical domain.
Much more rooted in psychological theory than the top down approach.
Aim of bottom up approach
To generate a picture of the offender - their likely characteristics. Routine behaviour, social background - through SYSTEMATIC ANALYSIS OF EVIDENCE.
What is investigative psychology /aims
Applying STATISTICAL procedures, alongside PSYCHOLOGICAL theory, to the analysis of crime scene evidence. The aim is to establish PATTERNS OF BEHAVIOUR that are likely to occur across crime scenes.
This is used to develop a STATISTICAL DATABASE which acts as a BASELINE for comparison.
Can be used to determine whether different crimes are committed by the same person.
CHARACTERISTICS to investigative psychology:
Interpersonal consistency, Spatial consistency, forensics awareness, criminal career, and criminal characteristics.
Interpersonal consistency:
How the offender treated the victim may be characteristic of their approach to that race / sexual orientation. While some rapists are v aggressive and try to humiliate their victims, others may be more ‘apologetic’, this may tell the police something about how the offender relates to women more generally.
Spatial consistency:
The offender is likely to commit somewhere that they’re comfortable in - somewhere they know well (en route to a friends house or workplace).
Forensic awareness
Describes those individuals who have been the subject of police interrogation before; their behaviour may denote how mindful they are of ‘covering their tracks’.
Criminal career
Any past criminal experience they may have held.
Criminal characteristics:
Controlling, quiet, nervous, polite.
Geographical Profiling (ROSSMO)
Attempts to make predictions about offenders based on info abt LOCATION AND TIMING OF OFFENCES.
Involves generalising from the locations of crime scenes to the likely home/work/social base of offender - also known as CRIME MAPPING.
Assumption is that serial offenders will restrict their crime to areas they are familiar with, and so understanding the special pattern of their behaviour –> provides a ‘CENTRE OF GRAVITY’.
Centre of gravity is likely to include the offenders base (spatial patterns). It may also help the investigators make educated guesses abt where the next strike is ‘JEOPARDY SURFACE’.
