Offender profiling

• What is offender profiling?

  Method used by police to attempt to produce a probable 'profile' of the criminal
• What are the approaches to offender profiling?

  Top down approach - used by FBI in the US

  Bottom up approach - used by police in the Uk
• What is the top down approach?

  • Looks at crime scene characteristics to assign offenders to different categories
  • Each offender category has different typical characteristics
  • Profile is constructed incl. hypotheses of likely characteristics, background, etc
  • This description is used to work out a strategy to catch the offender
• What are the differences between organised and disorganised offenders?

  Organised offenders:

  • Plans their crimes
  • Victim is targeted
  • Killer has a 'type'
  • Little evd. left at the crime scene
  • High degree of control during the crime
  • Socially + sexually competent

  Disorganised:

  • Little planning of crime
  • Impulsive nature of attack
  • Little control during the crime
  • Body left at the crime scene
  • Low IQ
  • History of failed relationships + sexual dysfunction
• How is an FBI profile constructed?

  • Data assimilation - Profiler reviews evd.
  • Crime scene classification - (organised or disorganised?)
  • Crime reconstruction- Hypotheses in terms of sequences, etc
  • Profile generation - Demographic background of offender, behaviour, physical characteristics, etc
• Evaluation of the top-down approach

  • - Best suited to crimes that reveal important details about the suspect, e.g rape. Common offences (burglary) don't lend themselves to tpa as the crime reveals little about the offender, Means the tpa is limited - can't be applied to all crimes. However, in 2017, reports of tpa has been used to profile burglars
  • Developed based on interviews w/36 killers in USA - small & unrepresentative sample to base an entire approach on. Also not sensible to rely on self-reports from sex offenders who give inaccurate info. Suggests tpa doesn't have a scientific basis