top down approach

• Briefly outline the top down approach (2 marks)

  •  conceptual categories/templates of organised and disorganised offender are pre-existing in the mind of the profiler
  •   evidence from the crime scene and other details of the crime/victim/context are then used to fit into either of the pre-existing categories and determine the offender as one type or the other.
  • relies heavily on prior knowledge and intuition of the profiler
• what is offender profiling

  a method of working out the characteristics of an offender by examining the characteristics of a crime and a crime scene
• Ressler et al’s six stages 

  1. Profiling inputs- data collected including:  description of the crime scene, background info on victim, details of  the crime itself 
  2. Decision process models-  organises data into meaningful patterns

  • eg .murder type (serial, long period, spree, lots short period)

  Time,location  factors

  3. Crime assessment

  • crime is classified as organised or disorganised
• 4. Criminal profile

  • Profile constructed with hypotheses about their likely habits background and beliefs
  • They use this description to find the killer
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  • 5. Crime assessment
  • Written Report given to investigative agency to match to suspects, if there is new evidence or no suspects they return to stage 2 
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  • 6. Apprehension 
  • If a suspect is arrested- they review all the findings and validity and if necessary improve the process for future cases.
• Organised:

  • Crime planned, victim specifically targeted
  • High in intelligence 
  • Socially competent 
  • Concleas body or weapons
  • Use of restraints 
• Disorganised 

  • Unplanned, random selection of victim 
  • Contains clues like semen blood fingerprints 
  • Usually low intelligence and social competence 
  • Messy doesn't conceal body or weapons 
  • No use of restraints