Offender profiling: top down app

• What are the features of the top-down approach?

  • Offender profiling
  • Organised and disorganised types of offenders
  • Constructing an FBI profile
• What is offender profiling? (TOP-DOWN)

  • Aims to narrow field of enquiry/likely suspects
  • Involves scrutiny of crime scene and analysis of evidence to generate hypotheses about the characteristics of the offender (e.g. age, occupation)
• Where did the top-down approach originate from?

  • The 'American' approach
  • Resulted from FBI's behavioural science unit interviewing 36 sexually motivated serial killers
  • Aims to match what is known from the crime and the offender to a pre-existing template
• What are the characteristics of an organised offender?

  • Evidence of planning the crime
  • Targeting victims/has a type
  • High degree of control
  • Little evidence left
  • Above average intelligence
  • Usually in a skilled/professional occupation
  • Socially and sexually competent
  • Married and may have children
• What are the characteristics of a disorganised offender?

  • Little evidence of planning
  • Spontaneous/spur of the moment
  • Scene reflects impulsive nature (body usually still at scene)
  • Little control from offender
  • Lower than avg IQ
  • Unskilled work/unemployed
  • Tend to live alone
  • Sexually and socially dysfunctional
  • Live alone and near offence
• What are the 4 stages in constructing an FBI profile?

  • Data assimilation
  • Crime scene classification
  • Crime reconstruction
  • Profile generation
• Evaluating top-down approach

  :( only applies to particular crimes

  :( Based on outdated models of personality

  :( Evidence doesn't support disorganised offender
• LIMITATION PARTICULAR CRIMES (AO3)

  • Limitation as top-down profiling is best suited to crime scenes that reveal details about suspect
  • includes rape, arson and cult killings or instances with macabre practises such as torture, dissection and fantasies#
  • As a result more common offences such as burglary or assault cannot be profiled using top-down approach as it reveals little detail about the offender
  • meaning a pre-established typology may not be usable to then analyse and develop an offender profile
  • top-down approach may lack explanatory validity as its limited to more severe and sadistic crimes meaning it may lack effectivity in more simplistic crimes which also need to be dealt with
  • As a result bottom-up may be more effective with using techniques of smallest space analysis
• LIMITATION, OUTDATED MODELS OF PERSONALITY (AO3)

  • The typologies used are likely naïve and reductionist due to being based off outdated models of personality
  • Views behaviour as driven by stable dispositional traits rather than external factors that may be constantly changing
  • As a result, top down approach uses static models of personality which may result in poor validity in identifying suspects and predictive value
  •  it may be more beneficial to focus on motivations in which may be more relative to the crimes committed rather than dispositions which are open to change
• LIMITATION, POOR EVIDENCE FOR DISORGANISED (AO3)

  • lack of evidence to support the model of the disorganised offender
  • Canter found using smallest space analysis from 100 murders in USA
  • use of 39 characteristics, findings suggested a distinct organised type but failed to establish a disorganised type
  • limitation, undermined classification system as a result may suggest lack of  IV