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Flashcards in Top Down Approach Deck (7)
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1
Q

Offender profiling

A
  • predicts and profiles characteristics of an offender

- creates a hypotheses of who the offender might be

2
Q

FBI top down approach

A
  • Interviewed 36 sexually motivated murderers

- concluded that data could be characterised into organised or disorganised murderers

3
Q

Organised and Disorganised offenders

A
  • each category has certain characteristics

- in future situations crime scenes could be matched

4
Q

Organised offender

A
  • evidence crime was planned
  • victim is deliberately targeted
  • control is maintained
  • little evidence
  • high IQ
  • in a professional occupation
  • has a family
  • sexually competent
5
Q

disorganised offender

A
  • little evidence of planning
  • offence is spontaneous
  • crime scene left messy
  • little control
  • low IQ
  • unskilled
  • unemployed
  • sexual dysfunction
  • live alone
6
Q

Four stages of constructing an FBI profile

A
  • Data assimilation (review of evidence)
  • crime scene classification (organised/ disorganised)
  • crime reconstruction (hypotheses in terms of sequence of events/ behaviour of victim)
  • profile generation (hypotheses of likely offender)
7
Q

Evaluation

A

+ Research support - serial killers studied - seem to be a subset of features such as high intelligence and
sexual competence of serial killers - has validity
+ wider application - applied to burglary leading to an 85% rise in solved cases in the US
- Flawed evidence - small interview sample, similar kind of offender, non-standard questions