top down approach

• offender profiling

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

  American approach

  collects data about the murderer and works down to the lower levels in order to assign offenders to categories
• organised offender

  they show evidence of having planned the crime in advance

  they tend to be socially and sexually competent with higher than average intelligence
• disorganised offender

  shows little evidence in planning and leaves clues

  tends to be socially and sexually incompetent with lower than average intelligence
• first stage of constructing an FBI profile

  data assimilation = the profiler reviews the evidence eg. crime scene photographs
• second stage of constructing an FBI profile

  crime scene classification = whether they are a organised or disorganised offender
• third stage of constructing a FBI profile

  crime reconstruction = hypotheses in terms of the sequence of events and behaviour of the victim etc
• fourth stage of constructing an FBI profile

  profile generation = hypotheses related to the likely offender eg. physical characteristics
• strength of the top down approach

  it can be adapted to other kinds of crime such as burglary which shows it has a wider application that what was assumed
• limitation of top down profiling

  one limitation of top down profiling is the evidence on which it is based

  canter et al - argued that the FBI agents used a small sample and the sample wasn't selected randomly which means it doesn't have a scientific basis