Bottom-Up Approach

• The British bottom-up model does not begin with fixed typologies. Instead, the profile is 'data-driven and emerges as the investigator rigorously scrutinises the details of a particular offence.
• The aim is to generate a picture of the offenders' characteristics, routines and background through analysis of the evidence.
• Statistical procedures detect patterns of behaviour that are likely to occur (or coexist) across crime scenes. This is done to develop a statistical 'database' which then acts as a baseline for comparison.
• Features of an offence can be matched against this database to suggest potentially important details about the offender, their personal history, family background, etc.
• A central concept is interpersonal coherence - the way an offender behaves at the scene (including how they 'interact' with the victim) may reflect their behaviour in everyday situations (e.g. controlling, apologetic, etc.), i.e. their behaviour 'hangs together' (has coherence).
• This might tell the police something about how the offender relates to women (for example more generally.
• The locations of crime scenes are used to infer the likely home or operational base of an offender - known as crime mapping.
• Serial offenders restrict their 'work' to areas they are familiar with (spatial consistency). Location can also be used alongside psychological theory to create hypotheses about the offender and their modus operandi (habitual way of working).
• Canter and Larkin 1993) proposed two models of offender behaviour:

  • The marauder - operates close to their home base.
  • The commuter - likely to have travelled a distance away from their usual residence when committing a crime.
• Canter and Larkin also suggest that the pattern of offending locations is likely to form a circle around the offender's usual residence, and this becomes more apparent the more offences there are.
• The offender's spatial decision-making can provide insight into the nature of the offence (planned or opportunistic, mode of transport, employment status, etc.).