Top down

• What is the top down approach?

  The top-down or typology approach was developed by the American FBI in the 1970s. They analyse the crime scene and the profiler uses information to categorise the offender into pre-existing templates: organised and disorganised. In 1992, a third category of ‘mixed’ offender was added to accommodate those who did not fit in to the existing framework. 
• What is the method of the top down approach?

  Their method consists of : Data Assimilation (Gathering police and pathology reports and photographs) ; Crime Scene Classification (organised, disorganised, or mixed offender type) ;

  Crime Reconstruction (hypothesising the victims behaviour and crime sequence) ; Profile Generation (presenting the hypotheses including the demography, physical characteristics and behaviours).
• who stabilised the offender categories of top down approach and how?

  The offender categories were established by hazelwood and Douglas who interviewed 36 sex offenders.
• what are the strengths of the top down?

  However, according to Holmes in 1998, the top-down approach has contributed to arrest in only 17% of the cases in which it was used. Although this is low, it could still be regarded as a valuable contribution to society as any aid in catching offenders is useful. 
• evaluate the method used to create offender categories in the top down appraoch?

  One strength of this method is that the use of interviews and case studies provides a much more detail to be collected. However the sample size is small which reduces the generalisability to the wider population, and the results would only be generalisable to sex offenders which limits the use of the results. Additionally, the use of self report techniques could reduce the validity as the offenders could lie either for notoriety or a reduced sentence.   
• what are the weaknesses of top down approach?

  contradicting research - canter

  contradicting research - Alison

  deterministic
• elaborate on canters research as a weakness for the top down approach?

  Another limitation of the top down approach is the validity of the organised and disorganised categories. In 2004 Canter tested the categories with a content analysis of information from of 100 different serial killers in America and looked for characteristics that the top don approach suggested were organised or disorganised. From this he concluded that all serial murderers have organised characteristics.
• elaborate on Allisons research as a weakness for the top down approach?

  Additionally, in 2002 Alison compared criminal behaviour and history of 100 British male rapists and found that those who offended in similar ways did not share any characteristics. Although these researches contradict each other, both suggest that the categorisation of disorganised and organised offenders is invalid.  
• elaborate on deterministic as a weakness for the top down?

  Alison suggested that offender’s behaviour is the result of complex interaction of many factors such as context and interaction with the victim, therefore implying that the top down approach is deterministic as it assumes that offender behaviour is the result of fixed personality traits.