offender profiling: the bottom-up approac

• the bottom-up approach


  profilers work up from evidence collected from the crime scene to develop hypotheses about the likely characteristics, motivations and social background of the offender
• investigative psychology 


  a form of bottom-up profiling that matches details from the crime scene with statistical analysis of typical offender behaviour patterns based on psychological theory
• geographical profiling


  based on the principle of spatial consistency: that an offenders operational base and possible future offences are revealed by the geographical location of their previous crimes
• marauder


  who operates in close proximity to their home base
• the commuter


  who is likely to have travelled a distance away from their usual residence
• evaluation: evidence supports investigative psychology

  • david canter conducted a content analysis of 66 sexual cases
  • data was examined using the statistical technique
• evaluation: strength, evidence supports geographical profiling

  • Canter collated information from 120 murder cases
  • smallest space analysis revealed spatial consistency in the behaviour of killing
• evaluation: scientific basis, strength

  • more objective and scientific than the top-down approach