offender pofiling

• Crime is an act committed in violation of the law where the consequences of the conviction by court is punishment, especially where the punishment is a serious one such as imprisonment
• Two problems with defining crime are:

  Cultural: polygamy is illegal in the Uk but is legal in other countries.

  Historical: homosexuality is still illegal in other countries and was only made legal in the UK in 1967.
• One way of measuring crime is official statistics. This is when a crime is reported to the police and recorded in the official figures. These are published as a snapshot of the number of crimes commited across the country.
• One way of measuring crime is victim surveys. This is the public's experience of crime over a particular period of time. 50 000 households are randomly chosen to report on crimes they have been victim of.
• Offender surveys are another way of measuring crime. Individuals self report on the types of crimes they have committed. It aimed to identify trends between perpetrators and victims.
• Offender profiling is a tool used by the police used to narrow down the list of likely suspects. The aim is to generate a hypothesis about the probable characteristics of the offender.
• The bottom up approach to offender profiling is when profilers work up from evidence collected from the crime scene to develop hypotheses on likely characteristics of the offender.
• The top down approach (typology approach) to offender profiling is when profilers start with a pre established typology and work down in order to assign offenders to one of two categories based on witness accounts and evidence from the crime scene. It originated in the US because of work carried out by the FBI. The two categories are organised and disorganised which claim offenders have a certain way of working.
• An organised offender show evidence of planning, and have deliberately targeted victims. There is high control and there is little evidence left. They tend to have an above average IQ. They are usually married with children.
• A disorganised offender show little evidence of planning suggesting the offence may have been spontaneous. The crime scene reflects the impulsiveness of the act as there is little control. They tend to have a low IQ and tend to have failed relationships and introverted personalities.
• A strength of the top down approach is that it has been useful in catching some high profile serial killers e.g Ted Bundy.

  Another strength is that the organised/ disorganised distinction is still used as a model for professional profilers in the US and has widespread support.
• A limitation of the Top down approach is that is only applies to certain crimes like murder and rape making it a limited approach in identifying a criminal.

  Another limitation is that the behaviours of the disorganised/ organised types are not mutually exclusive, and there can be a combination of behaviours from both types. This has led to more detailed typological models such as Keppel and Walter 1999, who focus on the killer's motivations rather than trying to determine specific types.