Offender profiling Flashcards
(25 cards)
What is the purpose of offender profiling?
To identify the characteristics of a criminal and narrow down the list of possible suspects.
What are the two approaches to offender profiling mentioned?
- Top-down approach
- Bottom-up approach
Describe the top-down approach to offender profiling.
Starts with pre-defined criminal profiles and fits the criminal into one of these profiles, with general profiles first and specific details later.
Which approach do police in America tend to use?
Top-down approach.
What are the four steps in the FBI’s top-down approach to offender profiling as described by Douglas et al (1986)?
- Assimilation
- Classification
- Reconstruction
- Profile generation
What are the two offender profiles used in the top-down approach?
- Organised offender
- Disorganised offender
What characterizes an organised offender?
- Above-average intelligence
- Crime is planned
- Controlled
- Cleans evidence from the scene
- Skilled
- Socially and sexually competent
- Follows media coverage of the crime
What characterizes a disorganised offender?
- Below-average intelligence
- Crime is impulsive
- Lacks control
- Leaves evidence at the scene
- Unskilled
- Socially and sexually incompetent
- Does not follow media coverage of the crime
Fill in the blank: The top-down approach may be overly simplistic as it categorizes offenders into _______ and _______.
[organised offender], [disorganised offender]
What does the bottom-up approach start with?
The criminal’s characteristics.
Which approach do police in Britain tend to use?
Bottom-up approach.
What is investigative psychology?
The use of scientific psychology and psychological theory to solve crimes and identify criminals.
What is interpersonal coherence in the context of investigative psychology?
The consistency of a criminal’s behavior during a crime with their behavior in everyday life.
What statistical analysis techniques are used in investigative psychology?
- Multidimensional scaling
- Smallest space analysis
What does geographical profiling involve?
Using statistical analysis to make inferences about the offender’s geographical location.
What is the circle hypothesis?
The theory that serial offenders commit crimes within a geographical circle and that their home will be within this circle.
Who tested the circle hypothesis and what was the result?
Canter and Larkin (1993); they found that 87% of offenders lived within the predicted circle.
What are the two geographical models for offending locations?
- Marauder
- Commuter
What is the marauder model?
Commits crimes within a criminal range from their own home.
What is the commuter model?
Travels away from their home to commit crimes within a criminal range of that area.
What supporting evidence did David Canter provide for the bottom-up approach?
Developed a profile of the ‘Railway Rapist’ which closely matched the offender.
What did Canter and Lundrigan (2001) find regarding the geographical profiling of serial killers?
Killers’ homes tended to be in the centre of the plotted area where they disposed of bodies.
What is a strength of the bottom-up approach compared to the top-down approach?
It can be applied to a wider range of crimes.
True or False: The bottom-up approach relies on objective and measurable data.
True.
