American Approach

Question 1

3 assumptions of this approach

Answer 1

Known offenders who commit the same offences as unknown offenders will share characteristics e.g culture

Behaviour and motivation is constant

Individual’s behaviour can be generalised and predicted from initial statistical analysis of others

Question 2

Advantages of this approach

Answer 2

• easy to use without any needed training

- profiles can be assembled in a short amount of time

Question 3

Disadvantages of this approach

Answer 3

• limited to population samples
• not specific to individual - generalised from known offenders
• inaccurate

Question 4

Study involved

Answer 4

Hazelwood and Douglas

Question 5

Aim:

Answer 5

To test the reliability of organised/disorganised typologies

Question 6

Method:

Answer 6

Content analysis using psychometric method of multidimensional scaling

Based on interviews

Question 7

Participants:

Answer 7

100 separate cases

All from USA

Question 8

Procedure:

Answer 8

100 cases assessed to find out if the features hypothesised to each typology (organised/disorganised) would be consistently and distinctively different

• third crime from each serial killer analysed
• crime classification manual used to classify crime and organised or disorganised

Question 9

Results:

Answer 9

Twice as many disorganised as organised crime scene actions identified (disorganised more common or easily identified)
Two crime scene characteristics:
- body concealed in 70% of cases
- sexual activity occurred in 75% of cases

Further analysis failed to distinguish between typologies

Question 10

Conclusions:

Answer 10

No distinction between typologies of serial murderers

All crimes have organised element

Suggests that better way to look at the individuals personality differences between offenders

Question 11

Is American approach top down or bottom up

Answer 11

Top down