2. Offender Profiling: The Bottom-up approach Flashcards
What is the bottom-up approach?
Profilers work up from the evidence found at a crime-scene to form hypotheses about the likely characteristics, motivations and social background of an offender.
What is the aim of the bottom-up approach?
To form a picture of an offender and their various characteristics through systematic analysis of evidence found at a crime-scene. It aims to form a data-driven image of offenders not one based on typologies.
What is investigative psychology?
A form of bottom-up profiling that matches details from the crime-scene with statistical analysis of typical offender behaviour patterns based on psychological theory.
What are the aims of investigative psychology?
- To establish patterns of behaviour that are likely to occur or co-exist across crime-scenes
- To develop a statistical database that can be used as a baseline for comparison
What is interpersonal coherence?
This is the idea that the way an offender behaves at a crime-scene and the way they interact with the victim may reflect their behaviour in domestic life.
What is forensic awareness?
This is the idea that you may be able to tell which offenders have been subject to police investigation previously because of the way they attempt to cover their tracks.
What is geographical profiling?
A form of bottom-up psychology based on the principle of spatial consistency: that an offenders operational base and possible future offences are revealed by the geographical location of their previous crimes.
Who first used the term geographical profiling and when?
Kim Rossmo in 1997
What is ‘crime mapping’?
This is when investigators make inferences about the operational base of an offender based on the locations of all there known crimes
What assumption is there about the geographical location of offences committed by serial offenders?
Serial offenders will restrict their ‘work’ to the areas they are geographically familiar with and so understanding the spatial pattern of their behaviour provides investigators with a ‘centre of gravity’ which normally includes the offenders operational base.
What else is geographical profiling used for?
Its used to help investigators make educated guesses about where an offender may strike next - the jeopardy surface.
What is Canter’s Circle theory?
Canter & Larkin (1973) proposed 2 models for offender behaviour;
The Marauder - operates in proximity to their home base
The Commuter - who has travelled a distance away from their usual residence
What does Canter’s theory say will happen in both models for the offender?
Eventually the patterns of offences will form a circle around the base of operation for the offender. This will help the investigators work out if crimes were planned or opportunistic as well as what the ‘mental maps’ of an offender might be.
What are the evaluation points for the bottom-up approach?
Evidence supports investigative psychology
Evidence supports geographical profiling
It has a scientific basis
Relatively wide applications
What evidence supports investigative psychology?
Canter & Heritage (1990) a content analysis of 66 sexual assault offenders - content analysed using the statistical analysis technique - smallest space analysis -c computer programme that identifies correlations - found correlations - shows how statistical techniques can be usefully applied
