Top-Down Offender Profiling

• what is the top-down approach?

  • American FBI approach to profiling, based on the idea that offenders have certain signature ways of working (their modus operandi) and these generally correlate with a particular set of social/psychological characteristics
  • Profilers have pre-existing conceptual categories of offenders in their mind
  • organised offender and disorganised offender
  • evidence from crime scene, victim or content are then used to fit pre-existing categories
• what is constructed in top-down profiling?

  • a profile including a hypothesis about likely demographic background, habits, physical characteristics, behaviour and belief
• what is the aim of top-down offender profiling?

  the US FBI's Behavioural Science Unit wanted to better understand behaviours in offenders
• what was the method/procedure of top-down profiling?

  • FBI conducted extensive qualitative interviews with 36 sexually-motivated serial killers
  • the aim of these interviews was to gather specific details about their behaviours, crimes and crime scenes so that a database of common characteristics could be developed
  • interviews rely of self-report
  • FBI used this database to analyse patterns and trends of offenders' behaviour to create templates of offenders, that they could use to make assumptions about current offenders
• what are organised characteristics of a crime?

  • high degree of control during crime
  • violent fantasies carried out
  • used restraints on victim
  • weapon usually hidden
  • tries to conceal evidence
  • operates with surgical precision
  • body transported from scene
• what are disorganised characteristics of a crime?

  • likely to engage very little with victim and perform sexual acts post-mortem
  • minimal control on part of the offender to reflect impulsive nature of the attack
  • minimal use of restraints
  • leaves body on display
  • messy/no effort to conceal scene
  • victim likely to be random
  • little evidence of planning, spontaneous
• what are organised characteristics of an offender?

  • skilled/professional occupation
  • average/high intelligence
  • plans offences
  • usually married, may have children
  • socially/sexually competent
  • have a car in good working order
• what are disorganised characteristics of an offender?

  • unskilled or unemployed
  • socially incompetent
  • bellow average intelligence
  • tend to live alone and relatively close to where offence took place
  • history of sexual dysfunction and failed relationships
• what are the stages of constructing an FBI profile?

  1. Data assimilation - the profiler reviews the evidence (crime scene photographs, pathology reports, etc.)
  2. Crime scene classification - organised or disorganised
  3. Crime reconstruction - hypotheses in terms of sequence of events, behaviour or victim etc
  4. Profile Generation - hypotheses relating to the likely offender, e.g. of demographic background, physical characteristics, behaviour etc