Top down offending

• Method of working out the characteristics of an offender by examining the characteristics of the crime and crime scene. This developed in the USA in the 1970s as result of work done by the FBI. The FBI’s behavioural unit gathered data from the in depth interviews with 36 sexually motivated serial killers including Ted Bundy and Charles Manson. It’s also known as the typology approach. It’s regarded as a less scientific version of profiling (compared to bottom up)
• Stage 1-  Profiling input.

  Background information on victim (job, relationship)/ details of crime (weapon, cause of death)/ details of crime scene.
• Stage 2- Decision process model.

  Murder type (mass, spree or serial)

  Time factors ( short time/ long time?/ day time/night time?)

  Location ( was the crime scene the same as the murder scene?)
• Stage 3- crime assessment. 

  Categorised as organised or disorganised.
• Stage 4- profile.

  Hypothesis about the likely background, habits and beliefs. Used to work out how to catch the offender. Anticipate how they might react during a police interview.
• Stage 5- assessment 

  Written report given to the police. People that match the profile evaluated. If new evidence is generated or no suspect identified, go back to step 2.
• Stage 6- apprehension/ evaluation.

  It a suspect is arrested, then the whole process is reviewed for accuracy. How valid is it? Do any charges need to be made?
• Distinction between organised and disorganised is based on the idea that serious offenders have a signature way of working(a modus operandi), and that this Mo is correlated with particular social/ psychological characteristics that link to the individual.
• Organised crime:

  Crime scene- evidence of planning and control with little evidence left behind.

  Victimology- victim appears to be chosen or even known to the offender.

  Employment- likely to have a full time job.

  Intelligence- average/ higher intelligence 

  Childhood- likely to have experienced inconsistent discipline.
• Disorganised crime:

  Crime scene- little evidence of planning, signs of spontaneous, likely to be evidence left behind.

  Victimology- victim appears random.

  Employment- unlikely to have success in employment. 

  Intelligence- bellow average intelligence.

  Childhood- likely to have experienced harsh discipline.
• A strength of top-down approach is that there is some evidence to suggests this approach is useful. Canter et al examined data for 100 murders in USA. They examined the cases with reference to the characteristics for organised and disorganised characteristics. The findings showed there was evidence for a distinct organised type. However, there was no evidence for disorganised type. This does undermine the whole system if one of the type has no evidence. This suggests that although there is some evidence, its mixed and therefore unreliable, certainly in the case of disorganised crime.
• A weakness is that it only applies to particular crimes. Eg it suit crimes that reveal important details about the suspect, such as rape, arson and cult crimes. Also, crimes involving practices like carrying out fantasies, dissections of the body and sadistic torture. More common offences e.g burglary and even murder do not lend themselves to this type of offender profiling. This suggest that its a limited approach in profiling all criminal behaviour.
• A weakness is that the approach is based on outdated typology (organised and disorganised). This model assumes that offender behaviour is consistent across situations and contexts. Alison et al suggests it is outdated to think that a persons personality is not affected by external factors that change how people behave in different situations. This suggests the approach has poor predictive validity, because it cannot predict how people will behave in different situations and therefore identify suspects in advance. 
• A weakness is that the classification of crime based on this approach is too simplistic. The two types are not mutually exclusive and a variety of combinations could occur in a murder scene. Godwin put forward an example of a case where a killing occurs where the perpetrator is intelligent and sexually competent, but leaves the body at the scene. Other profilers have put forward alternatives that suggest there are more than two types and they may differ in their crimes according to different motivational factors.