Offender Profiling

• what are the three main goals of profiling?

  1. Social and psychological assessment – information on personality, age, race, sex, employment, education and marital status.
  2. Psychological evaluation of belongings – possessions which may associate an offender with the crime scene, such as souvenirs from the crime scene, photos and pornography.
  3. Interviewing suggestions and strategies – once a profile is built, the profiler is responsible for developing questioning techniques for the offender once in custody, as they will have ideas on how to draw out the required information.
• what is the top-down approach?

  • adopted by the FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) in the 1970s.
  • By interviewing criminals, profilers could build a picture of typical offender behaviours and build a profile “from the top-down”.
  • begins by looking carefully at the crime scene and drawing conclusions from the evidence about the offender.
• what are some characteristics of organised offenders?

  • Planned
  • Victim targeted
  • Personalises the victim and controls conversation
  • Aggressive acts performed before death
  • Weapon is absent from the scene
  • Body is hidden from view at the scene or removed from it
  • High intelligence
  • Social competence
  • Usually has a partner
• what are some characteristics of disorganised offenders?

  • Unplanned
  • Victim not targeted
  • Victim is depersonalised and avoids conversation
  • Unplanned violence
  • Weapon is often present
  • Body is often left visible at the scene rather than removed
  • Low intelligence
  • Socially awkward
  • Unlikely to have a partner
  • Poor employment history
  • Little interest in their crimes
• what did Douglas (1992) find?

  identify a third offender type known as “mixed” in order to classify those who don’t easily fit into the categories of organised or disorganised.
• what are the four stages of a top-down profile?

  1. Stage 1: Data assimilation – collection of all evidence available (e.g. crime scene photos, post mortem results).
  2. Stage 2: Crime classification – organising the crime into a particular type (i.e. organised or disorganised).
  3. Stage 3: Crime reconstruction – reconstructing the crime in order to develop predictions about the motives and behaviour of the offender/victim.
  4. Stage 4: Profile generation – developing a profile based on this information regarding various characteristics, including physical appearance and personality.
• method of Canter et al (2004)

  • The researchers conducted content analysis on 100 cases of serial killers in the US.
  • They used the criteria set out by Douglas et al. (1992) to classify the crimes as organised or disorganised.
• results of Canter et al (2004)

  • The researchers found a significantly higher number of disorganised crimes.
  • Further analysis of the types of crime did not clearly separate the organised and disorganised crimes.
• evaluation of top-down profiling (1)

  • Canter et al. (2004) argued that it was overly simplistic to reduce the types of criminal to only two. While Douglas (1992) added the “mixed” typology, this is not necessarily a solution to the problem. This again suggests that top-down profiling tends to be more based on intuition or “hunch” rather than objective methods, which could lead to bias in interpretation of the evidence and this is a problem because it reduces the scientific basis of top-down profiling.
• evaluation of top-down profiling (2)

  • Another issue raised by the top-down approach is that it often only applies to one type of crime, namely violent crime and rape. This therefore is a limitation of the approach as it is primarily applicable to one type of crime, sexual assaults, which also means that most of the offenders concerned are male. This causes a gender bias in the approach as the research focuses primarily on male offenders and a disorganised or organised female offender may have different characteristics.
• evaluation of top-down profiling

  • Canter et al. (2004) argued that it was overly simplistic to reduce the types of criminal to only two. While Douglas (1992) added the “mixed” typology, this is not necessarily a solution to the problem. This again suggests that top-down profiling tends to be more based on intuition or “hunch” rather than objective methods, which could lead to bias in interpretation of the evidence and this is a problem because it reduces the scientific basis of top-down profiling.
• results of Canter et al (2004)

  • The researchers found a significantly higher number of disorganised crimes.
  • Further analysis of the types of crime did not clearly separate the organised and disorganised crimes.
• evaluation of top-down profiling (2)

  • Another issue raised by the top-down approach is that it often only applies to one type of crime, namely violent crime and rape. This therefore is a limitation of the approach as it is primarily applicable to one type of crime, sexual assaults, which also means that most of the offenders concerned are male. This causes a gender bias in the approach as the research focuses primarily on male offenders and a disorganised or organised female offender may have different characteristics.
• what is the bottom-down approach?

  • investigative psychology and developed by David Canter
• what are some key assumptions of the bottom-up approach?

  1. Interpersonal coherence – consistency between the way offenders interact with their victims
  2. Time and place
  3. Criminal characteristics – characteristics about the offender can help to classify them
  4. Criminal career – crimes tend to be committed in similar fashion by offenders and can provide indication of how their criminal activity will develop.
  5. Forensic awareness – offenders who show an understanding of a police investigation are likely to have had previous encounters with the criminal justice system.
• what is geographical profiling?

  • form of bottom-up profiling and takes particular note of the principle of time and place as mentioned above.
• what are the key principles of geographical profiling?

  • Locatedness – may be that several locations are relevant.
  • Systematic crime location choice – this is the assumption that crime scenes are not random.
  • Centrality – as crime scenes are likely to occur in a familiar area to the offender, this means that crime scenes tend to cluster. commuters - will travel from their home to the crime scene, and marauders - will commit offences close to home.
  • Comparative case analysis – this is the assumption that the crimes are being committed by the same offender
• method of canter - john duffy "railway rapist"

  Using evidence, Canter put together a profile of the renamed “Railway Killer”. This included both personality and geographical characteristics.
• results of canter - john duffy "railway rapist"

  • canter’s profile suggested that this individual had a poor past history with women, violent sexual history, forensic awareness, was in his mid to late twenties and was a semi-skilled labourer.
  • These personality characteristics matched the profile of John Duffy
  • Geographically, Duffy also fit Canter’s profile, which suggested the offender would have knowledge of the railway and lived near to the crime scenes, as Duffy had worked for the railways as a carpenter and lived centrally to the clusters of crimes committed.
• evaluation of bottom-up profiling (1)

  • The usefulness of Canter’s profile in a real life sense is clear to see; it resulted in the successful arrest of John Duffy and because of his capture, the eventual arrest of his accomplice, who was charged with 7 rapes and 3 murders. Essentially, Canter helped to put a stop to their violent activity. At the same time, one can’t forget that this is still a case study and has not been carried out in a controlled environment. Having said that, Canter’s theory has been applied to historical cases and still manages to measure up
• evaluation of bottom-up profiling (2)

  • Compared to top-down, the bottom-up approach can apply to more than one type of crime, which makes it more useful. As top-down profiling tends to only apply to crimes of sexual assault or more violent crimes such as murder, it is difficult to use the approach with crimes of less severity such as serial burglary or arson. As such, the bottom-up approach is able to be generalised to different types of crime, as it makes use of objective measures such as crime scene location.