Top-down approach to offender profiling

• Offender profiling


  A behavioural and analytical tool to help investigators accurately predict and profile the characteristics of unknown offenders.
• What is offender profiling used for?

  • To solve crimes
  • To narrow down the list of likely suspects
  • Generate hypotheses of probable characteristics e.g age, background, occupation.
• Where does the top-down approach originate from?

  America
• How did the FBI generate the top-down approach?

  • Drew upon data from in-depth interviews with 36 sexually-motivated murderers.
  • Including Ted Bundy and Charles Mason.
  • Concluding that data can be organised into organised or disorganised crime
• What did the organised and disorganised categories contain?

  • Certain characteristics which could be used in the future.
  • If the data from a crime scene matched some of the characteristics of one category we could then predict other categories.
• How were the disorganised and organised categories used?

  If the data from the crime scene matched some of the characteristics from one category we could then predict other characteristics and find the offender.
• Organised offender

  • Evidence of having a crime planned in advance.
  • Victim is deliberately targeted, suggesting the killer or rapist has a type of victim they seek out.
  • Maintain a high level of control and operate with precision.
  • Little evidence or clues left behind at the crime scene.
  • Above-average intelligence
  • Skilled professional occupation
  • Socially and sexually competent
  • usually married and may have children.
• Disorganised offender

  • Little evidence of planning suggesting offence may have been spontaneous.
  • Crime scene reflects compulsive nature of the attack- body usually still at crime scene.
  • Offender has little control over the attack
  • Lower than average intelligence
  • Unskilled work or unemployment
  • History of sexual dysfunction and failed relationships
  • Live alone- close to place an offence took place
• Stages of the construction of an FBI profile

  • Data assimilation: Profiler reviews the evidence e.g crime scene photos, pathology reports, witness reports.
  • Crime scene classification: Organised or disorganised.
  • Crime reconstruction: Hypotheses in terms of sequence of events, behaviour of victim.
  • Profile generation: Hypotheses related to the likely offender e.g demographic background, physical characteristics, behaviour.
• Research support for organised crime

  • Canter et al conducted an analysis of 100 US murders each committed by a different serial killer using smallest space analysis. Identified correlations across different types of behaviours. Used to assess 39 aspects of serial killings, like torture or restraint, attempt to conceal body, cause of death.
  • Analysis revealed there seems to be a subset of features of many serial killings which matched FBI typology for organised offenders.
  • Increases reliability to profiling.
• Why are the organised and disorganised types not mutually exclusive?

  • Godwin argues that in reality it is difficult to classify killers as one or the other type.
  • A killer may have multiple contrasting characteristics such as high intelligence and sexual competence but commits a spontaneous murder leaving the victim’s body at the crime screen.
  • Showing a variety of combinations can occur at any given murder scene.
  • The organised-disorganised typology is probably more of a continuum.
• Wider application of top-down profiling

  • Adapted to other types of crime e.g burglary.
  • Critics of top-down profiling have claimed that the technique only applies to sexually motivated murders, but Meketa reported that top-down profiling has recently been applied to burglary, leading to an 85% rise in solved cases in 3 united states.
  • Detection method retains organised-disorganised distinction but also adds 2 new categories, interpersonal (offenders know the victim and steals something of significance) and opportunistic (inexperienced young offender).
  • Wider application than originally assumed
• Why does top-down profiling have flawed evidence?

  • FBI profiling was developed using interviews with 36 murderers in the US- 25 were serial killers, the other 11 single or double murderers. At the end of the process 24 were classified as organised offenders and 12 disorganised.
  • Canter et al, argued the same was poor, the FBI agents did not selection a random or large sample, nor did the sample include different types of offenders. There was no set questions so interviews were all different and not comparable.
  • Lacks internal validity and external validity
• Briefly explain the top-down approach to offender profiling?

  • categories of organised or disorganised offenders are pre-existing in the mind of the profiler.
  • Evidence from the crime scene and other details of the crime/victim/content are then used to fit into either of the pre-existing categories and determine the offender as one type or another.