Top - down approach

• What is offender profiling used for?

  Narrowing down likely suspects in crimes
• Who often works alongside police in high-profile murder cases?

  Professional profilers
• What is required to make an offender profile?

  Scrutiny of the crime scene and evidence
• When did the top-down approach originate?

  In the 1970s
• What unit of the FBI developed the top-down approach?

  Behavioral Science Unit
• How many sexually motivated murders were analyzed by the FBI?

  36 murders
• What two categories did the FBI organize the data into?

  Organised and disorganised crimes
• What can matching crime scene data to categories help predict?

  Other likely characteristics of the offender
• What does the organised type of offender show evidence of?

  Planning the crime in advance
• How does an organised offender treat their victim?

  Victim is deliberately targeted
• What is a characteristic of an organised offender's crime scene?

  Little evidence or clues left behind
• What is a common trait of organised offenders regarding intelligence?

  Tend to be above average intelligence
• What is a characteristic of disorganised offenders' crimes?

  Little evidence of planning
• How do disorganised offenders typically behave during a crime?

  They have little control over the situation
• What is a common trait of disorganised offenders regarding their living situation?

  Tend to live alone
• What are the four main stages of constructing an FBI profile?

  1. Data Assimilation
  2. Crime Scene Classification
  3. Crime Reconstruction
  4. Profile Generation
• What does the data assimilation stage involve?

  Reviewing evidence like crime scene photos
• What is the purpose of crime scene classification?

  To categorize the crime as organised or disorganised
• What is involved in crime reconstruction?

  Hypothesizing about sequence of events
• What does profile generation focus on?

  Hypotheses about the likely offender
• What research supports the organised category of offender?

  David Canter et al.'s analysis of 100 murders
• What technique did Canter et al. use in their analysis?

  Space analysis
• What did Canter et al.'s analysis reveal about serial killings?

  Features matched FBI's typology for organised offenders
• What is a counterpoint to the organised-disorganised typology?

  They are not mutually exclusive categories
• What does Maurice Godwin argue about categorizing killers?

  Killers may have multiple contrasting characteristics
• How can top-down profiling be applied beyond murder cases?

  It can be adapted to other crimes like burglary
• What did Tina Meketa report about top-down profiling in burglary cases?

  It led to an 85% rise in solved cases
• What additional categories were added to the organised-disorganised distinction in burglary profiling?

  Interpersonal and opportunistic categories
• What is a limitation of the evidence used in top-down profiling?

  The sample was not random or large
• What did Canter et al. argue about the FBI's sample?

  It lacked various types of offenders
• What does the lack of a standard set of questions in interviews suggest?

  Interviews were not very comparable
• What does the critique of top-down profiling suggest about its scientific basis?

  It does not have a sound scientific basis