Top-down approach

• What is the top-down approach?


  When previous crimes are analysed in order to create a profile of a likely offender. However this relies on the inutition and the beliefs of the profiler
• What is stage 2?


  Data process models
• What is stage 3?

  Crime assessment
• What is crime assessment?

  Based on the data collected the crime is classified as organised or disorganised.
• What is stage 4?

  Criminal profile
• What is criminal profile?


  A profile of the offender is constructed and the description is used to work out a strategy to catch the offender and anticipate how they may react to various investigative efforts.
• What is stage 5?


  Crime assessment
• What is a crime assessment?


  A written report that is sent to the police in order for them to compare it to the profiles they are evaluating.
• Who's research provides support for the top-down approach?

  Copson (1995)
• What did Copson (1995) find out?


  After questioning 184 US police officers he found that 82% found the technique useful and over 90% would use it again.
• However why may the organised and disorganised types of offenders suffer from bias?

  The original data that the classification is based came from interviews with 36 of the most dangerous and sexually motivated murderers.
• What is the potential issue with relying on the intuiton profilers determine who the criminal is?


  Profilers don't use science or theory when analysing who the potential offender is and at times use ambigious descriptions (Barnaum effect) that can be made to fit any offender
• Profiling is chekced for accuracy by seeing at the end of the case whether the profile was actually similar to the offenders' actual acharacteristics. However who's research suggested that the way in which the top-down approach is checked for accuracy needs to be changed?

  Alison (2003)