Offender Profiling Flashcards
(19 cards)
What is the top-down approach?
Typological approach - originated in the US, made from interviews with 36 sexually motivated killers in the 1970s.
Involves a pre-existing template, assign offenders to ‘organised’ and ‘disorganised’ from evidence from the crime scene.
What are characteristics of an organised type?
Crime Scene - torture, may transport victim, often bound, remove evidence, bring necessary materials.
Person - careful planning, specific victim, take trophies, may follow news coverage.
What characteristics are for a disorganised type?
Crime Scene - chaotic, little planning, kill near first attack, no attempt to conceal or remove evidence
Person - out of control, victims not carefully selected, kill in uncontrolled manner, poor social skills, can’t maintain relationships.
What are the steps of top-down offending profiling?
Data assimilation
Classification
Crime Reconstruction
Profile Generation
What is data assimilation?
gather evidence
What is classification?
organised or disorganised
What is crime reconstruction?
hypothesis about crime in terms of sequence of events
What is profile generation?
hypothesis about likely offender
Describe Copson’s research evidence?
Questioned 184 officers
82% said it was useful.
90% said would use again
Describe research opposition from Canter.
Analysed 39 aspects of a murder by serial killers but no clear division between organised or disorganised.
He found different types of organised criminals and no evidence for disorganised types.
Douglas - suggested there’s a third type ‘mixed offender’
Limitation of top-down are based upon limited sample.
Interviews with 36 sexually motivated killers in 1970s from USA, lack temporal validity and generalisation.
What is Bottom-Up profiling?
Developed in UK by Canter, data-driven, develop hypothesis about likely characteristics, motivations and background of offender.
Involves investigative psychology and geographical profiling.
What is investigative psychology?
statistical database, baseline for comparison, identifies correlations between patterns of behaviours, may determine whether crimes are related or committed by the same person.
May flag up forensic awareness.
Davis et al - rapists who conceal fingerprints have had previous convictions for burglary.
What is Geographical profiling?
Analyses locations of a connected series of crimes and considers where crimes were committed, spatial relationships.
What is the Commuter Model?
Offender’s criminal range is separate from their home range. Still based around a known area but not home or workplace.
More sophisticated.
What is the Marauder Model?
The offender’s home range and criminal range are around the same area.
Younger, less experienced.
Describe research evidence for bottom-up approach.
Canter and Lundrigan - spatial consistency in the behaviour in 120 murder cases, location of each body site was in a different direction from previous creating a centre of gravity.
Describe the strength of the bottom-up approach as viewed as more scientific than top-down approach.
It applies statistical methods and psychological theories in contrast with the intuitive nature of top-down.
Greater credibility.
A strength of bottom-up as it can be used to profile for many different crimes.
Geographical profiling is useful in burglary cases whilst smallest space analysis will correlate data from all different cases.
Top-down is limited to murder cases, organised and disorganised classifications may not translate.
