Lesson 1: Top-Down Approach To Offender Profiling

Question 1

What is offender profiling?

Answer 1

A tool employed by the police to narrow down the list of likely suspects. Based on the idea that characteristics of the offender can be deduced from details of the offence and crime scene. Profiling methods usually involve careful scrutiny of the crime scene and analysis of evidence, including witness reports, in order to generate a hypothesis on the probable characteristics of the offender.

Question 2

What is the top-down approach?

Answer 2

Templates of organised offender and disorganised offender are pre-existing in the mind of the profiler. Evidence of the crime scene and other details of the context are then used to fit the offender into either of the two pre-existing categories and then determine the offender as one type.

Question 3

Organised offenders

Answer 3

• They show evidence of having planned the crime in advance; the victim is deliberately targeted and will often reveal the fact that the offender has a preference for a certain type of victim. They maintain a high level of control during the crime and operate with surgical precision. There is little evidence left behind.
• Tend to be of above average intelligence, in a skilled professional occupation and are socially and sexually competent. They are often married and have children.

Question 4

Disorganised offenders

Answer 4

• They show little evidence of planning, suggesting offence is spontaneous. The crime scene tends to reflect the impulsive nature of the attack, the body is often left at the scene and there appears to have been very little control from the offender.
• The offender tends to be of lower than average intelligence, be in unskilled work and often have a history of sexual dysfunction or failed relationships. They tend to live alone and often close to where the offence took place.

Question 5

Weakness of Top-Down Approach (1)

Answer 5

• Only applies to certain crimes (e.g. rape, arson, murders; that involve macabre practices such as sadistic torture, dissection etc. Common offences, such as burglary do not lend themselves to top-down profiling because the crime scene reveals very little about the offender.

Question 6

Weakness of Top-Down Approach (2)

Answer 6

• The organised or disorganised distinction was developed based on interviews with 36 serial killers in the USA. Critics have pointed out that this is too small and unrepresentative of a sample upon which to base a typology system.

Question 7

Weakness of Top Down Approach (3)

Answer 7

• Top-down profiling was developed based on interviews with 36 sexually motivated serial killers, including Ted Bundy and Charles Manson. Canter (2004) has argued that it is not valid to rely on self-report data from convicted serial killers when constructing a classification system.

Question 8

Weakness of Top-Down Approach (4)

Answer 8

• The organised or disorganised distinction is overly simplistic. Holmes (1989) suggests there are four types of serial killer; visionary serial killer (kill because the God or Devil is directing them to), mission serial killer (eradicate a group of people they consider undesirable), hedonistic serial killer (kill for the thrill) and power serial killer (kill to have complete control over victims)

Question 9

Weakness of Top-Down Approach (5)

Answer 9

• Canter et al. (2004) analysed data from 100 murders in the USA with reference to the characteristics thought to be typical of organised and disorganised killers. The findings did suggest evidence of a distinct organised type, however this was not the case for disorganised type which undermines the entire classification system.