Bottom-Up Approach

• Bottom-up profiling


  More objective and scientific than the top-down approach, more grounded in evidence and psychological theory rather than speculation and hunches
• Artificial intelligence in investigations

  • Can manipulate geographical, biographical and psychological data to produce insights and results assisting in the investigation
• Investigative psychology


  Has expanded due to suspect interviewing, examination of evidence presented in court, which supports its utility in the judicial process
• Criticisms of offender profiling

  Socially sensitive and a hindrance to police investigations
• Overreliance on offender profiling

  Danger that too much effort may be put into building offender profiles at the expense of other police resources that may be crucial in an investigation
• Inaccurate offender profiles


  May lead to miscarriages of justice
• Role of offender profiling

  Should complement an investigation rather than lead it
• Despite the many successes that the bottom-up approach to profiling has produced, there have been some significant failures
• Failures of offender profiling

  • The case of Rachel Nickell
  • Studies examining the effectiveness of offender profiling have had mixed results
• Gary Copson (1995) surveyed 48 police forces and found that advice provided by the profiler was useful in 83% of cases, but only in 3% did it lead to identification
• Richard Kocsis et al (2002) found that chemistry students produced a more accurate offender profile on a solved murder case than experienced senior detectives