Forensic Psychology Flashcards
What is Offender Profiling?
A behavioural and analytical tool that is intended to help investigators accurately predict and profile the characteristics of unknown criminals.
What is the top-down approach?
Profilers start with a pre-established typology and work down in order to assign offenders to one of two categories based on witness accounts and evidence from the crime scene.
What is meant by an organised offender?
An offender who shows evidence of planning, targets the victim and tends to be socially and sexually competent with higher than average intelligence.
What is meant by a disorganised offender?
An offender who shows little evidence of planning, leaves clues and tends to be socially and sexually incompetent with lower than average intelligence.
What is meant by top down typology?
It applies a “big picture” method and then looks for smaller details which will support the big picture.
Where did the top down approach originate?
In the United States as a result of the work carried out by the FBI in the 1970’s. More specifically the behavioural analysis unit.
Where does most of the Data for the American approach come from?
- The BAU drew on data from lengthy unstructured interviews with participants between 1979 and 1983.
- The participants were 36 convicted serial killers and murderers in American prisons whose crimes had a sexual orientation.
- Information was also collected about the crime scenes.
- Based on these interviews and data collected, the FBI developed two categories: organised/disorganised offenders
What does “modus operandi” mean?
“Ways of working”
These generally correlate with a particular set of social and psychological characteristics.
What are 12 likely characteristics of organised murderers?
- Crime is planned
- Shows self control at crime scene
- Leaves few clues/forensic evidence
- Victim is a targeted stranger
- Attempts to control the victim
- Hides body
- Rapes victim before death
- Above average IQ
- Socially and sexually competent
- Follows media coverage of the murder
- In a skilled occupation
- Will return to a crime scene
What are 12 likely characteristics of disorganised murderers?
- Little planning/preparation
- May know victims
- Little attempt to hide evidence at the crime scene
- Minimum use of constraint
- Random behaviour
- Body left in view
- Lives alone near to crime scene
- Secually and socially inadequate
- In an unskilled occupation
- Abused in childhood
- Frightened and confused at the time of the attack
- No interest in media
What information is needed for the FBI to make a certain profile?
- Colour photos of the crime scene
- Data about the neighbourhood of the crime (type of housing and average income of residents)
- the medical examiner’s report
- A map of the victims travels prior to the death
- A complete investigative report of the incident
- Background details of the victim
What are the 4 stages of constructing a profile?
- Data assimilation (collection of all available info)
- Crime classification (disorganised/organised)
- Crime reconstruction ( to generate hypotheses about behaviours involved)
- Profile generation
A03 points of top down profiling
- Best suited to crime scenes that reveal important details
- Classification system is too simplistic
- Only 36 interviews which is a small and unrepresentative sample.
- Ethnocentric
- Very subjective - lack of validity
+ One strength of the top down approach is its ability to quickly narrow down a list of suspects based on characteristics and behaviour
A03 Paragraph on: why top down profiling is “best suited to crime scenes that reveal important details about the suspects”
- One limitation of top down profiling is best suited to crimes which reveal important details about the offender (e.g. murder, rape, arson and sadistic torture)
- Common offenses such as burglary and destruction of property do not lend themselves to profiling as the crime reveals little about the offender
- this means that at best, it is a limited approach to identifying a criminal.
A03 Paragraph on: why top down profiling has a “ too simplistic classification system”
Another limitation is that its classification system is too simplistic.
- Behaviours describing organised/disorganised offenders are not mutually exclusive e.g. Godwin 2002 asks: how would police investigators classify a killer with high intelligence who commits a spontaneous murder? So there must be more types of topologies. Holmes 1989 suggested that there are 4: visionary, mission. hedonistic, power/control. He suggests we keep the focus on motivation rather than types.
- The conflicting topologies and approaches suggest that the classification systems may be too simplistic
