the bottom up approach

• Bottom-up approach - British approach which is looking at the details of the crime and use information to gradually build up a profile. concerned with individual personality of offender
• bottom-up approach created by Canter (1994) - also known as investigative psychology
• 5 key characteristics

  • interpersonal coherence
  • significance of time and place
  • criminal characteristics
  • criminal career
  • forensic awareness
• Interpersonal coherence - social and physical interactions with the victim can provide clues about how the person interacts with people in everyday life
• Signigicand of time and place - patterns that reveal that the offender chooses a specific time and place to Carry out the crime indicates that they have high level of control
• Criminal characteristics - analysis of data will reveal if the crime has been repeated and how likely it is to be repeated again
• Forensic awareness - evidence that has been covered up or destroyed indicates the individual is aware of police procedures so may add previous contact with the police
• Criminal consistency approach - criminal act in a consistent way so display similar characteristics to how act everyday

  interpersonal consistency - way offender treat victim is often characteristic to their approach to race, culture, sexual orientation or gendere
• Evaluation strengths - High reliability as Canter used investigative psychology to convict rapist John Duffy.

  content analysis of 66 sexual offences found that thee were certain characteristics and patterns present in each case, shows support

  uses quantitative data so objective method of offender profiling and is a more holistic approach

  used to profile offenders on a wide range of crimes
• Evaluation weaknesses - Copson argues only been successful in apprehending 3% of cases, issues with reliability

  Canter and Heritage's study only looked at sexual offences making hard to generalise other crimes

  lack of consistency between psychologists when describing characteristics of offenders, lacks validity and reliability