offender profiling: the bottom-up approach

Question 1

what are the strengths to this approach

Answer 1

• research support: Canter supports the effectiveness of the BUA in identifying dangerous offenders.
• BUA takes a more objective approach than TDA with its statistical methods therefore more reliable. TDA based of research from 50 years ago.

Question 2

what are the limitations to this approach

Answer 2

• evidence suggests profiling may be little more than guesswork. Kocsis et al. (2002) tested police professionals compared to chemistry students. Chem students produces more accurate results. The more experienced the police officers were, the more inaccurate their profiles were.
• when profiling goes wrong it can be catastrophic. British psychologist Paul Britton’s profile of the killer of Rachel Nickell completley derailed the police investigatation and resulted in the murderer going on to kill more people.

Question 3

is this American or British

Answer 3

British

Question 4

what is the aim

Answer 4

to generate a picture of the offender- their likely characteristics, routine behaviour and social background through systematic analysis of evidence at the crime scene

Question 5

does it begin with fixed typologies

Answer 5

no

Question 6

how is it data driven

Answer 6

because it emerges as the investigator engages in deeper and more rigorous scrutiny of the details of the offence. Much more grounded in psychological theory

Question 7

what are the two aspects of this approach?

Answer 7

• investigative psychology
• geographical profiling

Question 8

what is investigative psychology

Answer 8

• matches details from the crime scene with statistical analysis of typical offender behaviour patterns based on psychological theory. Acts as a baseline for comparison
• central to the concept is interpersonal coherance- the way an offender behaves at the scene may reflect their everyday behaviour. e.g. rapists are apologetic or want to maintain maximum control and humiliate their victims.
• significance of time and place is a key variable and may indicate where the offender lives
• forensic awareness describes individuals who have been subject to police investigation before, their behaviour may denote how mindful they are at covering their tracks.

Question 9

explain geographical profiling

Answer 9

• based on spatial consistency- an offender’s operational base and possible future offences are revealed by the geographical location of the previous crimes
• known as crime mapping - ppl commit crimes in a limited geographical space
• restricts work to places they’re familiar with
• based around Canter’s circle theory (Canter and Larkin 1993) when looking at railway rapists of John Duffy. Found two types of offenders: marauderer and the commuter