A03

• limitation- limited explanatory power

  • can only be used to explain crimes where there are obvious, visible characteristics such as rape where a crime scene has been left.
  • For example, with middle class crime such as Fraud there is no crime scene or physical evidence to analyse to categorise criminal into organised or disorganised. 
  • Therefore, top-down approach may only be effective with blue collar crimes and lacks generalisability to all crimes
• limitation- unscientific

  • unscientific as the method relies more on intuition than fact and evidence.
  • this means that is can be seen as not following the scientific requirements of psychology, potentially leading to false convictions of individuals + not able to standardise procedures for reliability and consistency with convictions
  • However, any type of profiling does increased number of successful convictions made, protecting future individuals from harm, and making the streets safer overall and decreased cost of additional policing as there is less wanted criminals.

   
• limitation

  • evidence to support the existence of an organised offender type however the same cannot be said for disorganised type
  • canter et al- these researchers analysed data from 100 murders in the US, with comparisons of each made to 39 typical traits of both offender types.
  • The disorganised offender cannot be identified as distinctly different from organised offenders suggesting system lacks validity and breadth. However only US crimes analysed, differs for all cultures.