Bottom-up approach

• Profilers work up from evidence collected from the crime scene to develop hypothesis - profile emerges after rigorously scrutinising the scene not just due to fixed typologies
• investigative psychology

  • established patterns of behaviour forming a statistical ‘database’ which acts like a baseline (pioneered by psychologists e.g David Canter)
  • Evidence is data driven; offenders leave a ‘psychological footprint’
• geographical profiling

  • Crime mapping  - info to do with the location of linked crime scenes to make inferences about the home/base of the offender
  • Circle theory - Canter + Larkin (1993) proposed 2 models of offender behaviour
  • Marauder - operated in close proximity to home
  • Commuter - likely to travel a distance away from usual residence
• Morphology

  • tendency for offences to be distributed around the offenders home or base
• Propinquity

  • the probability of the crime locations decreases incrementally as the distance from offenders base increases
• Canter 5 principles for creating a profile

  1. Interpersonal coherence (behaviour during the crime reflects behaviour in real life)
  2. Time and place significance (to remain in control, offenders pick locations familiar to them at times that are convenient)
  3. Criminal characteristics (patterns in behaviour help categorise them into a ‘type’)
  4. Criminal career (how many crimes have they previously committed)
  5. Forensic awareness (evidence from scene reveal if they have previously been in contact with the police, so have some awareness of the investigative process they go through)
• P: There is evidence supporting Investigative Psychology.

  E: Canter & Heritage (1990) used content analysis to compare behavioural characteristics identified in the offenders of 66 SA cases.

  E:  They found several characteristics were identified as common in most cases, such as use of impersonal language and lack of reaction. There is a significant correlation between these behaviours being shown by many offenders.

  L: This suggests that statistics can be used to inform theories developed about the offenders in different cases.
• P: There is evidence to support geographical profiling.

  E:  Lundrigan & Canter (2001) Collated information from 120 murder cases involving serial killers in the USA.

  E:  Smallest space analysis revealed spatial consistency in the behaviour of killers.  The location of each body disposal site was in a different direction from the previous sites, creating a centre of gravity. The offenders' base was invariably located. The effect was more noticeable in offenders who travelled short distances.

  L:  This supports Canter's claim that spatial information is key for determining the base of an offender.
• P: Despite many successes, the bottom-up approach has had significant failures, producing mixed results in other studies.

  E:  Copson (1995) surveyed 48 police forces and found that the advice provided by the profiler was judged to be useful in 83% of cases.

  E:  However, only 3% did it lead to an accurate identification of the offender.

  L:  Therefore, we cannot entirely rely on profiling to capture offenders, as they are not consistently effective.