Top-down approach (Offender profiling)

• What is offender profiling


  Building a personality profile of a criminal whose identity is unknown.

  This is used to help find the criminal and bring them to justice.
• Offender profiling context (TD/criminal profiling)

  • Now a standard procedure
  • First developed in 1950s by official FBIs behavioural science unit
  • Create the profile by compiling + analysing very piece of evidence available at a crime scene. Then they construct a personality profile based on facts from scene + behavioural traits of similar criminals.
  • Provides starting point
  • becoming more accurate since personality profiles based on continued analysis of criminals
• TD offender profiling background and summary

  • Background: American, developed in 1970s, by interviewing 36 sexually-motivated murderers
  • Summary: Criminals can be divided into 2 'typologies' (disorganised & organised). Takes info from crime scene + classifies it as either typology
  • (top-down uses data from crime scene to fit criminals into pre-made set of characteristics)
• Stages of classification


  1. Data assimilation: investigators gather info from multiple sources (crime scene photos, police reports).
  2. Crime scene classification: profilers decided whether crime scene represents dis/organised offender.
  3. Crime reconstruction: hypothesis = generated about what happened during crime (victim behaviour, crime sequence).
  4. Profile generation: profilers construct a 'sketch' of offender including demographic/physical characteristics, behavioural habits
• Organised murderer


  Characteristics: above average IQ, socially/sexually competent, live w/ partner, experience anger/depression at time of attack

  Type of murder: crime is planned, attempt to control victim, few clues at crime scene, victim = targeted stranger

  Tactic: direct strategy, aware offender only admits what they must
• Disorganised murderer


  Characteristics: lives alone near crime scene, sexually/socially inadequate, severe forms of mental illness, physically/sexually abused in childhood, frightened/confused in time of attack.

  Type of murder: little planning, random/disorganised behaviour, minimum use of constraint, little attempt to hide evidence at scene.

  Tactic: show empathy, interview at night, counsellor approach
• A03 of top-down approach - Not generalisable


  The original sample is very specific and not representative (36 dangerous + sexually motivated killers). Cannot apply to every killer as they aren't all sexually motivated
• A03 of top-down approach - Reductionist/Simplistic


  For example, Ted Bundy started as organised then became disorganised as victims managed to get away + attacks became random (can start organised then ramp up+ become disorganised). Only 2 classifications of killers and says it's one or the other. Killers tend to be very complex + may show characteristics of both/none, meaning killers are not that straight forward.
• A03 of top-down approach - Reliable


  The approach has 4 stages of classification. Every offender profile must follow these steps. Standardised procedure - all classifications are approached in the same way.