Bottom up

• The aim of the bottom up approach is to generate a picture of the offender, their likley characteristics, routine behaviour and social background
• investigative psychology

  Is an attempt to apply statistical procedures alongside psychological theory

  the aim is to establish patterns of behaviour that are likely to occur across crime scenes

  this is to develop a statistical database which is used for comparison
• interpersonal coherence is the way an offender behaves at the scene, including their interactions with the victims may reflect their behaviour in more everyday situations as people are consistent in their behaviour 
• significance of time and place - these may give indications about where the offender lives

  forensic awareness- focuses on individuals who may have been the subject if police interrogation before, their behaviour may denote how mindful they are of ‘covering their tracks’
• Geographical processing

  used to make inferences about where an offender is likely to live

  offenders are classed as either marauders or commuters

  marauders commit crimes close to home

  commuters travel away from home to commit crimes
• circle theory

  pattern of offending usually forms a circle around the offenders home
• a strength is the evidence for investigative psychology

  an analysis of 66 sexual assault cases using smallest space analysis

  serval behaviours were identified as common in different samples of behaviour

  each individual displayed a characteristic pattern of such behaviours which can help establish if 2 offences were committed by the same person, case linkage
• case linkage depends on the database of historical crimes that have been solved

  they’ve likley been solved because they are relatively straight forwards

  this means investigative psychology tells us little about crimes that have few links and remain unsolved
• there is support for geographical profiling

  collated information from 120 murder cases involving serial killers

  smallest space analysis revealed spatial consistency in the behaviour of the killers

  the location of each body disposal created a centre of gravity, the effect was more noticeable when offenders travelled short distances
• A limitation is that geographical profiling may not be sufficient on its own

  the success of geographical profiling may be reliant on the quality of data that the police can provide. recording of crime is not always accurate, can vary between police forces and an estimated 75% of crimes are not even reported to police in the first place.

  critics claim that other factors are just as important in creating a profile

  geographical information alone may not always lead to the successful capture of an offender.