Forensics!

• Offender Profiling

  A behavioural and analytical tool that is intended to help investigators accurately predict and profile the characteristics of unknown offenders
• Top-down Approach

  USA, work carried out by FBI in the 1970s

  Behavioural Science Unit used data gathered from in-depth interviews with 36 sexually motivated murderers

  Ted Bundy and Charles Manson

  Data could be categorised into organised and disorganised

  Each category has certain characteristics that can be matched to predict others which can be used to find the offender
• Organised Offenders

  Planned the crime in advance

  Victim deliberately targeted and the offender has a type of victim they seek out

  High degree of control

  Detached surgical precision

  Little evidence

  Above-average intelligence

  Skilled professional occupation

  Socially and sexually competent

  Married with children
• Disorganised Offenders

  Not planned in advance, spontaneous

  Body still at the scene

  Little control by the offender

  Lower than average IQ

  Unskilled work or unemployed

  History of sexual and relationship dysfunction

  Live alone and close to the scene
• Constructing an FBI profile

  1: Data Assimilation - the profiler reviews the evidence

  2: Crime Scene Classification - organised or disorganised

  3: Crime Reconstruction - hypotheses in terms of sequence of events, behaviour of the victim etc.

  4: Profile Generation - hypotheses related to the likely offender
• Bottom-Up Approach

  Generate a picture of the offender through systematic analysis of evidence

  Not fixed typologies but data driven, emerges as the investigator engages in deeper and rigorous scrutiny pf the details

  More grounded in psychological theory
• Investigative Psychology

  Form of bottom up profiling, matches details from the crime scene with statistical analysis of typical offender behaviour patterns based on psychological theory

  Aim to find patterns across crime scenes to develop a statistical data base that is a baseline for comparison

  Database may reveal info and whether the crime is the same person

  Interpersonal coherence, behaviour at the scene may reflect everyday behaviour

  Time and place, may indicate where they live

  Forensic awareness, police interrogation before may denote mindfulness covering their tracks
• Geographical Profiling

  Form of bottom-up profiling based on the principle of spatial consistency - that an offenders operational base and possible future offences are revealed by the geographical location of their previous crimes

  Crime mapping can be used in conjunction with psychological theories to create hypotheses about offender thinking and their modus operandi

  Serial offenders restrict work to areas they are familiar with, offenders base often in the middle of the spatial pattern

  Canters circle theory

  Suggest nature of the offence and the offender (age, transport, employment)
• Historical Approach

  1876

  Cesare Lombroso

  Italian physician who wrote L'Uomo Delinquente (The Criminal Man) suggests criminals are genetic throwbacks, a primitive subspecies who were biologically different from non-criminals

  Atavistic form would be described as speculative and naïve
• Biological Approach

  Offenders seen by Lombroso as lacking evolutionary development

  Savage and untamed nature means they cannot adjust to the demands of civilised society and would inevitably turn to crime

  Offending a natural tendency rooted on te genes

  Offending behaviour innate and they should not be blamed
• Atavistic Form

  A biological approach to offending that attributes criminal activity to the fact that offenders are genetic throwbacks or a primitive subspecies ill-suited to conform to the rules of modern society, distinguishable by facial and cranial characteristics

  Lombroso saw offenders as having physiological markers interlinked with the type of offence

  Cranial - narrow, sloping brow, strong prominent jaw, high cheekbones and facial asymmetry

  Dark skin, extra toes, nipples or fingers

  Insensitivity to pain, slang, tattoos and unemployment
• Offender Types

  Particular types of offenders in terms of their physical and facial characteristics

  Murderers were described as having bloodshot eyes, curly hair and ling ears

  Sexual deviants described as having glinting eyes, swollen, fleshy lips and projecting ears

  Fraudsters described as having thin and reedy lips
• Lombroso's Research

  Meticulously examined the facial and cranial features of hundreds of Italian convicts both living and dead

  Atavistic form, these features were key indicators of criminality

  Examined 383 dead convict skulls and 3839 living ones

  40% of criminal acts are committed by people with atavistic characteristics