Forensic Psychology Flashcards
Offender profiling
The process of predicting the characteristics of an offender based on the information available
What will a forensic psychologist use to build an offender profile?
Evidence gathered from the scene to build an offender profile
What does an offender profile outline?
The type of person likely to have committed the crime
What is an offender profile based on?
Prior experiences and it uses computer databases to analyse what is already known
The American approach of offender profiling
The top down of FBI approach relies on previous experiences of crimes
Hazelwood and Douglas
- Interviewed 36 serial killers and police officers in order to advance their theory
- They had a typology approach that offenders are mainly categorised by two types - organised and disorganised
Crime scene - Organised
- Crime is planned
- Shows self-control at the crime scene
- Leaves few clues
- Victim is a targeted stranger
- Attempts to control the victim
Offender - Organised
- Above average IQ
- Socially and sexually competent
- Married or co-habiting
- Experiencing anger/depression at time of offence
- Follows media coverage of crime
- Skilled occupation
Crime scene - Disorganised
- Little planning/preparation
- Little attempt to hide evidence at the scene
- Minimum use of constraint
- Random, disorganised behaviour
Offender - Disorganised
- Lives alone, near to crime scene
- Sexually and socially inadequate
- Unskilled occupation or unemployed
- Physically/sexually abused in childhood
- Frightened/confused at the time of attack
Top down profiling stages
1) Data assimilation - reviews evidence
2) Crime scene classification - organised vs disorganised
3) Crime scene reconstruction - hypothesis on sequence of events
4) Profile generation - hypothesis of likely offender
Evaluation of top down profiling 1 (particular crimes)
- A weakness of the top-down profiling is that it only applies to particular crimes
- It is best suited to crime scenes that reveal important details about the suspect e.g. weapon used
- More common offences, such as burglary do not lend themselves to profiling, as the crime scenes reveal little about the offender
- This means that it is not a useful approach in most crimes
Evaluation of top down profiling 2 (unreliable)
- The method is based on flawed data from interviews with 37 dangerous serial killers
- These individuals can be highly manipulative and unreliable
- This data was used to create the typology theory
- This means that the theory could be wrong
Evaluation of top down profiling 3 (outdated models of personality)
- It is based on outdated models of personality
- Typology classification is based on the assumption that offenders have patterns of behaviour and motivation that remain consistent
- Alison et al (2002) argue that behaviour is instead, driven by external factors that may be constantly changing
- This means that criminals may show organised and disorganised traits
Evaluation of top down profiling 4 (false dichotomy)
- It creates a false dichotomy, as there is more likely to be a continuum than two distinct categories of offender
- Canter et al (2004) analysed murders by 100 US serial killers, finding no clear distinction between the two types of offenders
- Instead they found several subsets of organised-type crimes, and little evidence for disorganised types
- This means that the disorganised type may not exist
The bottom-up approach
- British approach
- David Canter is the UK’s foremost profiling expert
- His bottom up approach looks for consistencies in offenders’ behaviour during the crime
- No initial assumptions are made about the offender
- The approach relies heavily on computer data bases instead and is much more scientific and objective than top down
HOLMES
Home Office Large Major Enquiry System
Investigative psychology
- Uses computer databases and Venn diagrams to look for similarities and differences in patterns between offences and offenders
- Interpersonal coherence
- Smallest space analysis
Interpersonal coherence
Assumes that people are consistent in their behaviour, so there will be correlations between the crime and their everyday life, although there may be changes over time
Smallest space analysis
A statistical technique which explores correlations between crime scene details and offender characteristics from large numbers of similar cases. Tries to link crimes together that may have the same offender.
Geographical profiling
A set of techniques for making inferences about crime and criminals from the location and timing of offences
Maradurer
They commit crimes within a defined radius of where they live. Link to circle theory
Commuter
They travel to another area to commit their crimes. This is a less common approach.
Circle theory
A circle drawn to encompass all the crimes in a series is likely to contain the offender’s base (Canter and Larkin, 1993)