Discuss the bottom-up approach for offender profiling

    Cards (10)

    • Bottom-up approach
      Largely developed in Britain by Canter, does not utilise typologies but is data and evidence analysis driven to produce a profile
    • Investigative psychology
      Attempts to apply statistical procedures and psychological theory to the analysis of crime scenes in order to establish patterns of behaviour
    • Methods of investigative psychology
      • Interpersonal coherence (refers to the way an offender behaves at the scene/with their victims is reflective of their day-to-day interactions)
      • Time and place significance (indicates whether offender is employed)
      • Forensic awareness (behaviours that indicate whether the offender has been involved with the police before)
    • Geographical profiling
      Uses locational information to make inferences about an offenders home or places of significance, based on the idea of spatial consistency which suggests that offenders stick to areas they are familiar with but not too close to home (buffer zone)
    • Centre of gravity
      The location that is likely to be near or to be the base of operations for the offender
    • Canter and Heritage conducted a meta-analysis of 66 sexual assault cases, data was examined using smallest space analysis and several behaviours were identified as common (use of impersonal language, lack of reaction to the victim), each individual displayed an identifiable pattern of these behaviours which can be used to link multiple crimes together
    • Lundrigan and Canter collated information from 120 murder cases involving serial killers in the US, smallest space analysis revealed spatial consistency in the behaviour of the killers, (e.g. location of each disposal site created a centre of gravity and the home base was invariable located near the middle of pattern)
    • The success of geographical profiling is reliant on the quality of data, it is estimated that 75% of crimes are not reported to the police, suggesting that geographical profiling alone may not lead to the capture of an offender
    • The success rates of offender profiling and the views of police forces who have utilised the techniques suggest that profiling cannot reliably identify an offender, it is purely a tool for narrowing down a suspect pool and in sticking too close to a profile the wrong individual may be arrested
    • While offender profiling can be useful in narrowing down a list of suspects, it must be used with caution to avoid wrongful arrests