Forensics: Defining and Measuring Crime, Offender Profiling Flashcards
What are the 2 problems with defining crime and give examples?
- Cultural: Forced marriage made illegal in the UK in 2014, however it is a practice in other countries.
- Historical: Homosexuality still illegal in many parts of the World and only made legal in UK in 1967.
-> Parent’s right to smack child outlawed in 2004.
What are the 3 ways of measuring crimes?
- Official statistics
- Victim surveys
- Offender surveys
What are official statistics?
- Crimes reported to the police and recorded in official figures which allow gov to formulate prevention strategies and police initiatives.
-> Published by Home Office as a ‘snapshot’ of the number of crimes committed across the country.
What are victim surveys?
- The public’s exp of crime over a particular period.
-> E.g. 50,000 households randomly chosen to report on the crimes that they have been a victim of in the past year, this is compiled in the Crime Survey for England and Wales.
What are Offender Surveys?
- Individuals self-report on the types of crimes they have committed.
-> The offender Crime and Justice Survey aimed to identify trends in offending and relationship between perpatrator and victims.
Evaluate the use of official statistics as a way of measuring crime
- Unreliable, significantly underestimate true extent of a crime.
- Only 25% of offences are included in the stats.
- 75% referred to as the ‘dark figure’ of crime.
- Farrinton and Dawds (1985) in Nottingham more petty crimes were reported than in neighbouring areas.
Evaluate the use of victim surveys as a way of measuring crime
- Greater degree of accuracy.
- 2006/7 official stats suggest a 2% decrease in crime from the year before.
- Recall: ‘telescoping’ could distort figures.
- Telescoping: inaccurate perceptions regarding time, where ppl see recent events as more remote than they are (backward telescoping) and remote events as more recent (forward telescoping).
-> Mental horror in memory can occur whenever we make temporal assumptions regarding past events.
Evaluate offender surveys as a way of measuring crime
- Insight into how many people are responsible for certain crimes.
-> Unreliable, Exaggerated or concealed figures?
What is Offender Profiling?
- A behavioural and analytical tool intended to help investigators accurately predict and profile 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 1 of 2 categories based on witness accounts and evidence from the crime scene.
- Profiler has exp, can use evidence at crime scene to develop a profile of the likely criminal.
What are the aims of offender profiling?
- Narrow the field of enquiry and the list of likely suspects.
-> through analysis of the crime scene and evidence. - Generate hypothesis: age, gender, ethnicity etc.
What is an example of the ‘American Approach’ to offender profiling?
- FBI: 1970s Behavioural Science Unit.
- Data gathered from in-depth interviews with 36 sexually motivated killers.
- Organised into one of two categories: organised or disorganised.
What are Modus Operandi’s ‘ways of working’ in crime?
Organised:
- Planned
- Above-average intelligence
- Socially and sexually competent
Disorganised:
- Spontaneous
- Impulsive
- Lower IQ
List the weaknesses of Offender profiling:
- Limited application to crime
- Outdated models of personality
- no evidence for disorganised killer (refutes Modus Operandi)
(-) Explain how offender profiling has limited application to crime
- Misses important details in rape, arson and cult killings.
- A limited approach to identifying a criminal.
(-) Explain how offender profiling uses outdated models of personality (Alison)
- Alison et al (2002), approach is naive and informed by old-fashioned models of personality.
-> Behaviour assumed to be driven by dispositional (inherent) traits.
-> Poor validity and static.
(-) explain how there is no evidence for disorganised killers (refutes Modus Operandi ‘ways of working’) (Canter)
- Canter analysed data from 100 murders in the USA.
- examined with reference to 39 characteristics typical of organised and disorganised killers.
-> found no particular evidence of traits for disorganised killers.
what is the British bottom up approach
- when research and statistics of similar crimes are used to develop a profile of the criminal based on previous convictions.
-> generate a picture of the offender.
-> characteristics, routine behaviours and social background.
What is investigative psychology
- applying statistical procedures and psychological theory to analyse crime scene evidence.
-> patterns of behaviour that occur/co-exist.
-> interpersonal coherence
-> forensic awareness
what is interpersonal coherence? (investigative psych)
- way the offender behaves at the scene, including how they interact with the victim, may reflect their behaviour in more everyday situations.
what is forensic awareness? (investigative psych)
- describes individuals who have been subjects of police interrogation before; their behaviour may denote how mindful they are of ‘covering their tracks’.
What is geographical profiling (Rossmo)
- Using info about the location of the crime scene to make inferences about the likely home or operational base of an offender - crime mapping.
- Used to create hypotheses about what the offender was thinking and their modus operandi.
Explain the Modus Operandi (MO) approach
- The core assumption of profiling is the existence of a MO
- serial offenders restrict their ‘work’ to geographical areas they are familiar with.
- Criminals often operate in a similar way and this reflects their personality.
- Provides investigators with a ‘centre of gravity’.
-> Includes their base (often in the middle of the spatial pattern).
-> Jeopardy surface- educate guesses about where the offender is likely to strike next.
What is the circle theory -> Canter and Larkin
- Two models of offenders behaviour.
-> The Marauder – who operates in close proximity to their home base.
-> The commuter - who is likely to have travelled a distance away from their usual residence.
(+) give evidence which supports investigative psych (Canter and Heritage)
- Canter and Heritage (1990) conducted a content analysis of 66 sexual assault cases.
- Common in most cases: Impersonal language and lack of reaction to victim (impersonal and sudden).
- Supports the use of statistical techniques in profiling.
(+) give evidence with supports geographical profiling (Lundrigan and Canter)
- Lundrigan and Canter (2001) collated information from 120 murder cases involving serial killers in the USA.
- Smallest space analysis: the location of each body disposal site was in a different direction from the previous, creating a ‘centre of gravity’.
- The offender’s base was invariably located in the centre of the pattern.
- More noticeable for maraunders.
(+) explain how the bottom down approach is supported by scientific bases (Canter)
- Canter: found bottom up profiling is more objective and scientific than top down approach, as it is grounded in evidence and psychological theory
- With use of AI, investigators are able to manipulate geographical, biographical and psychological data quickly to produce insights.
(+) explain research which supports offender profiling (Aubumere)
- Aubumere, 75% of British police officers said advice of the profiler had been useful to them in making predictions about the crime.
-> advice improved their understanding of the offender. - other police officers also stated that it supported their ideas and feelings about the offender.
(-) explain research which refutes offender profiling (Aubumere)
- Police from the Netherlands stated that they found the profiler’s advice as vague, that it was not financially viable, and that it needed follow up work.
- They also ignored advice if they didn’t agree with it.
constructing FBI profile
- A: data assimilation
- C: crime scene classification: time, date, location
- R: crime reconstruction: background, habits, beliefs
- C: profile generation
