top-down approach (offender profiling)

• offender profiling definition

  • aims to narrow the list of likely suspects
  • professional profilers employed to work alongside the police, especially in high-profile murder cases
  • the scene and other evidence is analysed to generate hypotheses about the probable characteristics of the offender (eg, age, background, occupation)
  • pre-existing templates of what an offender is
• top-down approach (American approach)

  • FBI interviewed 36 sexually-motivated murderers and used this data (together with characteristics of their crimes) to create two categories (organised and disorganised)
  • if the data from a crime scene matched some of the characteristics of one category we could then predict other characteristics that would be likely
• offender types based on 'ways of working'

  • the organised and disorganised distinction is based on the idea that offenders have certain signature 'ways of working'
  • these generally correlate with a particular set of social and psychological characteristics that relate to the individual
• Organised offenders

  • evidence of planning the crime = victim is deliberately targeted and the killer/rapist may have a 'type' of victim
  • high degree of control during the crime and little evidence left behind at the scene
  • above-average IQ = in a skilled/professional job
  • usually married, may even have children
• Disorganised offenders

  • little evidence of planning, suggesting the offence may have been spontaneous
  • crime scene reflects the impulsive nature of the act = eg, body still at the scene and the crime shows little control on the part of the offender
  • below-average IQ = may be in unskilled work or unemployed
  • history of failed relationships and living alone, possible history of sexual dysfunction
• FBI profile construction (stages)

  • data assimilation = review of the evidence (photographs, pathology reports, etc)
  • crime scene classification = organised or disorganised
  • crime reconstruction = generation of hypothesis about the behaviour and events
  • profile generation = generation of hypothesis about the offender (eg, background, physical characteristics, etc.)
• strength = support for organised category

  • Canter et al looked at 100 US serial killings, used smallest space analysis to assess the co-occurrence of 39 aspects of the serial killings
  • analysis revealed a subset of behaviours of many serial killings which match the FBIs typology for organised offenders
  • => component of the FBI typology approach has validity
  • counterpoint = Godwin argues that in reality most killers have multiple contrasting characteristics and don't fit into one 'type' AND little support for disorganised offender
• strength = can be adapted to other types of crimes (eg burglary)

  • Meteka reports that top-down profiling has recently been applied to burglary, leading to an 85% rise in solved cases in 3 US states
  • the detection method adds 2 new categories = interpersonal (offender knows their victim, steals something of significance) and opportunistic (inexperienced young offender)
  • wider application that originally assumed
• limitation = evidence for top-down profiling was flawed

  • Canter et al argues that the FBI agents did not select a random or even large sample, nor did it include different kinds of offender
  • there was no standard set of questions so each interview was different and therefore not really comparable
  • => top-down profiling does not have a sound, scientific basis
• extra evaluation

  • top-down approach is based on behavioural consistency = that serial offenders have characteristic ways of working (their modus operandi) so crime scene characteristics help identification
  • BUT Mischel argued that people's behaviour is much more driven by the environment they are in than by a thing called 'personality'
  • => a profiling method based on behavioural consistency may not always lead to successful identification of an offender
• top-down approach definition

  • profilers start with a pre-established typology and work down in order to assign offenders to one or two categories based on witness accounts and evidence from the crime scene
• IDA

  • Culture bias = American
  • Gender bias = interviewed men
  • Lacks universality
• Strength = ted bundy

  • Classic organised offender
  • American serial killer who abducted, raped and murdered dozens of young women and girls in various states between 1974 and 1978