FORENSIC top down approach with AO3

Question 1

define offender profiling

Answer 1

behavioural and analytical tool which intends to help investigations accurately predict and profile characteristics of unknown criminals

Question 2

what is this approach also known as

Answer 2

american approach, comes from USA from FBI in 1970s

Question 3

how does this approach work

Answer 3

starts off with a pre established typology and work down in order to assign offenders to one of two categories based on evidence

Question 4

how was this devised

Answer 4

36 in depth interviews with sexually motivated murderers

-ISSUE AS SMALL SAMPLE SIZE AND CANT GENERALISE TO ALL CRIMES

Question 5

what is organised and disorganised based on

Answer 5

idea that offenders have certain signature ways of working which correlate to social and psychological characteristics which come from the crime scene

Question 6

how does an organised offender commit a crime

Answer 6

-evidence of planning with a targeted victim, no clues left, socially and sexually competent, high IQ

Question 7

how does a disorganised offender commit a crime

Answer 7

Little evidence of planning, leaving clues, socially and sexually incompetent and low IQ

Question 8

what are the four main stages in the construction of an FBI profile

Answer 8

1. data assimilation- profiler reviews all evidence
2. crime scene classification- organised vs disorganised
3. crime reconstruction- hypotheses developed
4. profile generation- hypothesis developed in relation to likely offender

Question 9

strength

Answer 9

• research support, Canter Conducted analysis of different serial killers using a technique called smaller space analysis and found that serial killers have their own signature way of working, strength as it is validity for the organise or disorganised typology however, difficult to class criminals as one of the other as a research argues that the killer could have multiple contrasting characteristics which suggests that the typology can’t be applied to everyone or all crimes
• therefore the research on its own is not effective and we must use other tools

Question 10

limitation but strength on end

Answer 10

limitation as it cannot be applied to the wider population as we cannot use top-down profiling on all crimes, this is only limited to sexually motivated crimes as this was what the top-down approach was based on

• however practical applications have been applied to other crimes as a researchers have found the top down approach has been applied to burglary and has led to an 85% rise in solved cases
• have also found two new types such as interpersonal and opportunistic would suggest that offender profiling have extended and can be applied to all crimes

Question 11

limitation

Answer 11

flawed evidence
- based on limited samples which was 36 murderers in the US, small sample size and didn’t include different types of offenders, no standard set of questions, each interview different and not easily comparable, limitation bc it is not reliable or replicable and therefore more research needs to be conducted

Question 12

structure

Answer 12

• offender profiling
• 36 in-depth interview
• pre established typology
• organised vs disorganised
• 4 stages