Top down approach

• Offender profiling 


  Idea you can make assumptions about characteristics of an offender by careful analysis of offence they commit

  Craeful scrutiny of crime scene an analysis of other evidence including witness reports in order to generate hypothesis about probably characteristics of offender

  Aim to narrrow list of likely suspects
• Top down - American

  FBIs behavioural science unit in 70s drew upon data gathered from in depth interviews with 36 sexually motivated murders inlcuding Ted Bundy and Charles Manson

  made categories- organised and disorganised offenders, 24 classed as organised, 12 disorganised.

  They use evidence collected from crime scene and other contextual info to fit the offender into one of these types, this is based on the personal experience and intuition of the profiler
• Contstructing profile

  1. Data assimilation - profiler reviews evidence (crime scene photos, pathology reports, witness reports etc)
  2. Crime scene classification - either organised or disorganised
  3. Crime reconstruction - hypothesis in terms of sequence of events, behaviour of victim etc
  4. Profile generation - hyppothesis related to the likely offender eg demographic background, physical characteristics, behaviour etc
• Organised 


  • offense planned
  • crime scne reflects overall control
  • restraints used
  • body hidden
  • Avergae to above average intelligence
  • follows crime in news media
• Disorganised 


  • offense spontaneous
  • crime scene random and sloppy
  • minimal restraints used
  • body left in plain view
  • below average intelligence
  • minimal interest in news media
• W: flawed evidence 


  Research used a restricted sample of only 36 serial sex offenders so may not be generalisable to wider population

  Sample was small, not random, all same kind of offender, no standard set of questions so interviews diff and not comparible

  Also using self report method may have low validity - offenders tend to lie to either make their crimes seem worse or in hope of reduced sentence

  not valid, not generalisable
• S: Wider application


  Can be adapted to other kinds of crime such as burglary - Meteka reports top down profiling has recently been applied to burguary leading to an 85% rise in solved cases in three US states - detection method retains organised-disorganised distinction but also adds two new categories - interpersonal (offender knows victim and steals soemthing of significance_ and opportunistic (generally inexperiences young offender)
• S: Research support


  Canter conducted analysis of 100 US murders each comitted by different serial killer

  Smallest space analysis used a statistical technique that identifies correlations across differnt samples of behaviour - was used in order to asess whether there was torture or restraint, wehether there was an attempt to conceal the body, the form of murder weapon used and the cause of death

  Analysis revealed there does seem to be subset of features of many serial killings which matched the FBIs typology for organised offenders

  --> suggests key component has validity