Top down approach

• What is offender profiling in forensic psychology?

  A technique used to create a psychological and behavioural profile of an unknown criminal offender.
• What’s the American approach 

  The top down approach to profiling originated in the US as a result of work carried out by the FBI in the 70s

  -interviews with 36 sexually motivated serial killers 

  -determined that data could be spilt into 2 categories : organised and disorganised , certain characteristics that predictions can be made 

  -profilers gather data and then assign to a category (typology approach)
• What’s the organised characteristics of an organised offender?

  -evidence of planning 

  -have a type 

  -high levels of control 

  -tidy no clues or evidence 

  -about average intelligence 

  -skilled professional employment 

  -socially and sexually competent 

  -married possibly with kids 
• What’s the disorganised characteristics of an disorganised offender?

  -little evidence of planning 

  -spontaneous,spur of the moment 

  -little control 

  -crime scene reflects impulsivity 

  -below average intelligence 

  -unskilled work or unemployed 

  -history of sexual/relationship dysfunction 

  -lives alone and close to the crime scene 
• How is ted bundy an organised offender?

  -by 1972 he had graduated law school and showed great promise in a career in law or politics 

  -had a girlfriend 

  -he often war a fake cast on his leg ,walking on crutches 

  -preyed on young women

  -many victims were never found 
• How is Richard chase a disorganised  offender?

  -in and out of mental health institutions 

  -lived on his own e.g no girlfriend or social life 

  -no effort to conceal crimes 

  -no victim type 

  -murders were opportunistic

  -walked the streets checking doors “if the doors were locked that means you weren’t welcome”
• What are the four stages typically involved in constructing a criminal profile in forensic psychology?

  Review crime scene evidence, crime scene classification, crime reconstruction, and the final profile generation.
• What’s data assimilation ?

  Reviewing evidence 
• What’s crime scene classification ?

  organised or disorganised.
• What’s crime scene reconstruction?

  a hypothesis of what happened such as the sequence of events and the behaviour of victim and suspect
• What’s profile generation ?

  Hypothesis relating to the likely offender 
• What’s some evaluations for top down approach ?

  • there is research support for the organised category of offender - canter 100 us murders 
  • however , Goodwin says it’s hard to classify killers as one or the other 
  • Can be adopted to other crimes e.g meketa and bulgary
  • Top down approach small sample size + not random or large