Forensics - Top Down Approach Flashcards
What is offender profiling?
Also known as criminal 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 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 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.
How did the top-down approach originate?
The top-down approach to profiling originated in the United States as a result of work carried out by the FBI in the 1970s. More specifically, the FBI’s Behavioural Science Unit drew upon data gathered from in-depth interviews with 36 sexually motivated serial killers including Ted Bundy and Charles Manson.
How are offenders classified in the top-down approach?
Offenders are classified into one of two categories (organised or disorganised) on the basis of the evidence, and this classification informs the subsequent police investigation.
What are the stages of constructing an FBI profile?
The four main stages in the construction of an FBI profile are:
Data assimilation – The profiler reviews the evidence (crime scene photographs, pathology reports, etc.).
Crime scene classification – As either organised or disorganised.
Crime reconstruction – Hypotheses in terms of the sequence of events, behaviour of the victim, etc.
Profile generation – Hypotheses related to the likely offender, e.g., of demographic background, physical characteristics, behaviour, etc.
What is one evaluation point on the applicability of the top-down approach?
Top-down profiling is best suited to crime scenes that reveal important details about the suspect, such as rape, arson, and cult killings, as well as crimes that involve macabre practices (e.g., sadistic torture, dissection of the body, and acting out fantasies). More common offences, such as burglary and destruction of property, do not lend themselves to profiling because the resulting crime scene reveals very little about the offender. This means that it is a limited approach to identifying a criminal.
What is one evaluation point on outdated personality models in the top-down approach?
The typology classification system is based on the assumption that offenders have patterns of behaviour and motivations that remain consistent across situations and contexts. This is seen as naïve and is informed by old-fashioned models of personality that see behaviour as being driven by stable dispositional traits rather than external factors that may be constantly changing.
This means the top-down approach, which is based on ‘static’ models of personality, is likely to have poor validity when it comes to identifying possible suspects and trying to predict their next move.
What is one evaluation point on evidence against the disorganised offender?
David Canter et al. (2004), using a technique called smallest space analysis, analysed data from 100 murders in the USA. The details of each case were examined with reference to 39 characteristics thought to be typical of organised and disorganised killers. Although the findings did indeed suggest evidence of a distinct organised type, this was not the case for ‘disorganised’ offenders who seemed to undermine the classification system as a whole.
Nevertheless, the organised/disorganised distinction is still used as a model for professional profilers in the US and has widespread support.
What is one evaluation point on the simplicity of classification in the top-down approach?
The behaviours that describe each of the organised and disorganised types are not mutually exclusive; a variety of combinations could occur in any given murder scene. For instance, Grover Godwin (2002) has asked how police investigators would classify a killer with high intelligence and sexual competence who commits a spontaneous murder in which the victim’s body is left at the crime scene.
This has prompted other researchers to propose more detailed typological models. Robert Keppel and Richard Walter (1999) focus more on the different motivations killers might have rather than trying to determine specific ‘types.’
