offender profiling : top-down approach

• offender profiling

  use evidence from the crime scene to find out about the killer (e.g. age, occupation)
• the american approach (top-down)

  • FBI in the 1970s
  • characteristics of the crime are matched to a template
  • 'organised' and 'disorganised'
  • template from interviews with 36 sexually motivated serial killers
• types of offenders - organised

  • evidence of planning
  • choose types of victim
  • emotionally detached, little evidence, intelligent and skilled
• types of offenders - disorganised

  • not pre-planned
  • more evidence left behind
  • lower IQs, unskilled, history of psychological disfunction
• 4 stages of constructing a profile

  1. data assimilation - reviewing evidence
  2. crime scene classification - organised or disorganised
  3. crime reconstruction - sequence of events
  4. profile generation - characteristics of the offender
• strength

  support for distinct categories

  • canter (2004) - statistical analysis of 39 different aspects of 100 murders (restraint etc)
  • supports either organised or disorganised (validity)
  • however, people can be in both categories/mixture of both
• strength

  wider application

  • meketa (2017) - when used with burglaries, solved cases rose by 85%
  • approach is useful as it applies to non-sexual and non-violent crimes
• weakness

  flawed evidence

  • canter (2004) - sample was poor/limited
  • interviews for each murderer were different (no consistency - not scientific)
• weakness

  lack of consistency

  • MO can change as the criminal evolves and therefore its classification can change
  • therefore issues of consistency for identifying serial offenders