Top-down

• Offenders are not simply organised or disorganised. It may be that there is features of both in the crime. An offender may start off being disorganised and become more organised as they develop their modus operandi. (links to Alsison et Al study)


  Top down approach is reductionist
• Top down approach can only really be applied to sexual crimes or murder cases as the approach was built from results of interviews of convicted serial killers and sex murderes


  Top down approach can only be applied to sex and murder crimes
• Top down approach is seen to rely too heavily on the subjectivity of the individual profiler


  Top down approach allows room for subjectivity
• Qualititive data- gives insight to criminals and their thought processes and behaviour whereas bottom up approach is made from quantitative data which doesn't give deeper meanings.


  Top down approach was devised from qualitative data
• Can be effective - Arthur Shawcross murdered 11 prostitutes after being released from prison. Profiled as a white male, lower mental age, low paid job,cheap car, hunts and fishes, married and works near the river where police waited for him to return to the crime scene and the profiling was correct.


  There's evidence supporting Top down approach
• Top down approach makes much more use of the profiler and is easier to carry out than bottom up approach


  Top down approach easier to carry out than top down approach
• Offender profiling: Aims to narrow the list of suspects 


  Main aim of offender profiling is to narrow the field of enquiry and the list of likely suspects.

  Professional profilers are employed to work alongside the police especially in high-profile murder cases.

  The scene and evidence are analysed to generate hypotheses about the probable characteristics of the offender (age, background, occupation etc)
• What is offender profiling?

  A behavioural and analytical tool that is intended to help investigators accurately predict and profile the characteristics of unknown offenders
• What is the top down approach ?

  Profilers start with a pre-established typology and work down to lower levels in order to assign offenders to one of two categories based on witness accounts and evidence from the crime scene
• What is an organised offender ?

  An offender who shows evidence of planning, targets a specific victim, tends to be socially and sexually competent, with higher than average IQ
• What is a disorganised offender?

  An offender who shows little evidence of planning, leaves clues and tends to be socially and sexually incompetent with lower than average intelligence
• Top-down approach: Match offender/crime to pre-existing templates


  The pre-existing template was developed by the FBI in the 1970s. They gathered data from interviews from 36 sexually motivated murderers including Ted Bundy and Charles Manson. They concluded the crimes could be categorised into organised and disorganised. Murderers or rapists are classified into either of those based on evidence and this informs the investigation
• Organised and disorganised types based on offenders 'ways of working' 


  The organised and disorganised distinction is based on the idea that serious offenders have certain signature 'ways of working'.

  These generally correlate with a particular set of social and psychological characteristics that relate to the individual
• Organised offenders are characterised by

  • Evidence of planning the crime - victim is deliberately targeted and the killer/rapist may have a 'type' of victim
  • High degree of control during the crime and little evidence left behind
  • Above average IQ - skilled and professional job
  • Usually marries and may even have children
• Disorganised offenders are characterised by

  • little evidence of planning - suggesting offence may have been spontaneous
  • crime scene reflects the impulsive nature of the act- body still at scene and the crime shows little control on part of offender
  • below-average IQ - unskilled work or unemployed
  • history of failed relationships and living alone, possible history of sexual dysfunction
• FBI construction stages:

  1. Data assimilation - review evidence (photographs, pathology reports etc)
  2. Crime scene classification - organised or disorganised
  3. Crime reconstruction - generation of hypotheses about the behaviour/events
  4. Profile generation - generation of hypotheses about the offender (background, physical characteristics etc)
• One limitation of top-down profiling is it only applies to particular crimes. Top-down profiling is best suited to crime scenes that reveal important details about the suspect (e.g. rape, arson, murder or sadistic torture). Common offences e.g. burglary do not lend themselves to profiling because the crime reveals little about the offender. This means it is a limited approach to identify a criminal
• A further limitation is this approach is based on outdated models of personality. The typology classification system is based on the assumption that offenders' patterns of behaviour and motivations are consistent across situations and contexts. Alison et al. (2002) argued this is based on outdated personality models that see behaviour as driven by dispositional traits rather than by constantly changing external factors. Therefore it has poor validity when it comes to identifying suspects + predicting their next move
• Another limitation is little support for the ideas of the 'disorganised offender'. Canter et al (2004) used smallest space analysis of 100 murders in the US. Each case was examined against 39 characteristics of typical organised and disorganised killers. The findings showed evidence of a distinct organised type but not a disorganised type - undermines this whole classification system. Despite this, the organised/disorganised distinction is still used as a model for professional profilers in the US
• Another limitation is that the classification system is too simplistic. Behaviours describing organised/disorganised offenders are not mutually exclusive. Godwin (2002) asks: How would police classify a killer with high intelligence but who commits spontaneous murders? So there are more detailed typologies. Holmes(1989) suggests 4 types of serial killer: visionary, mission, hedonistic, power/control. Keppel and Walter (1999) suggest we focus on motivations of killers instead of types. The conflicting typology versions suggest the classification systems may be too simplistic
• A final limitation is the way the typology was developed. Interviews were used with 36 killers in the US. This is a small and unrepresentative sample on which to base a typology system that may have a significant influence on the nature of the police investigation. Canter argued that it is not sensible to rely on self-report data with convicted killers when constructing a classification system. This methodological criticism of the way the approach was developed questions the validity of the top-down approach as a whole.