L3 - Bottom Approach for Offender Profiling Flashcards
What does the bottom-up approach involve?
Systematic analysis and rigorous scrutiny of the scene and details of the crime
Highly data-driven
Aim and process of investigative psychology?
Aim is to establish behaviours likely to happen at certain crime scenes
What’s interpersonal coherence?
How the way an offender acts at a crime scene reflects their behaviour in daily life
Why is significance of time and place important?
May indicate where the offender lives
Why is forensic awareness important?
Indicates that the offender may have been interrogated by police before or their DNA/fingerprints are on file
What is geographical profiling?
Study of spatial behaviour in relation to crime and offenders by focusing on the crime’s location as a clue to where the offender lived, works, and socialises
What are assumptions made in geographical profiling?
Offender lives in the middle of the spatial pattern, and will commit in familiar areas
Early crimes are committed closer to their home and then travel further as they become more confident
Difference between marauder and commuter and a similarity
Marauders commit close to home and commuters commit travel away from home
Both will reveal a circle around where they live
What does the crime’s spatial pattern tell?
Planned or opportunistic crime
Mode of transport
Employment status
Role of statistical database in investigative psychology?
Created to allow comparison of the offence to generate probable details of offender’s personal history, background, etc.
Examples of data used in geographical profiling?
Local transport and geographical spread of similar crimes
+ related to application
Can be applied to a wide range of crimes like arson and burglary not to just certain types unlike top-down
+ related to being better than top-down
More scientific and grounded in psychological theory and less driven by speculations
- related to identification
48 police forces surveyed, approach was useful in 83% of cases but only 3% led to an accurate identification of the offender
