Offender profiling Flashcards
What is an offender profile?
outlines the type of person likely to have committed the crime
What is an offender profile based on?
prior experiences and uses computer databases to analyse what is already known
What does the phrase top-down refer to?
an approach, which starts with the big picture and then fills in the details
In the 1970s what did the FBIs behavioural science unit do?
gathered data from 36 sexually motivated serial killers, including Charles Manson & Ted Bundy to develop this approach to Offender Profiling
What did Hazelwood and Douglas publish in 1980s?
heir account of the ‘lust murderer’, they advanced a theory that lust murderers are mainly catergorised by two types
What are the two types of lust murders?
- Organised
- Disorganised
What is an organised offender?
- ordered life
- kills after a critical life event
- Actions are premeditated and planned
- Bring weapons and restraints to the scene
- High intelligence and employed
What is a disorganised offender?
- likely to have committed the crime in a moment of passion
- no evidence of premeditation and they are more likely to leave evidence such as blood, semen, murder weapon
- less socially competent and more likely to be unemployed
What is an issue with top-down profiling?
- Reductionist as the classification system is too simple
- Offenders are simply not disorganised or organised?
- They may be both
What is an issue with application of top-down typology?
can only be applied to sexually motivated serial killers; because of the limitations of the originally sample that they interviewed: - sexually motivated serial killers!).
What is a bottom-up approach?
starts with small details and creates the big picture
- No initial assumptions are made about the offender and the approach relies heavily on computer databases
Who is Canter (1990)
The UK’s foremost profiling expert
What does Canter’s (1990) approach do?
looks for consistencies in offenders’ behavior during the crime. Canter’s most famous case is that of the ‘Railway Rapist’ John Duffy
Who is John Duffy?
Sex offender
carried out 24 sexual attacks and 3 murders of women near railway stations in North London in the 1980s
What did Canter do to capture John Duffy?
analysed the geographical details and the evidence and drew up a surprisingly accurate profile. However, it should be noted that the profile didn’t directly lead to John Duffy’s arrest
What is a strength of the bottom-up approach?
as wider applications; it can be applied to other crimes, not just sexually motivated serial killers like top-down
What is an issue with the over-use of the bottom-up approach?
Over use could lead to miscarriages of justice. E.g. Paul Britton’s misleading profile in the hunt for the killer of Rachel Nickell
What does investigative psychology use?
Computer databases and a programme called Smallest Space Analysis
What do the Computer databases identify?
Patterns
and to look for possibilities to see if a series of offences are linked
What is central to investigative psychology?
the concept of interpersonal coherence this means the behavior of the offender at the time of the crime will be comparable to what they’re like in everyday life
What evidence support investigative psychology?
Canter & Heritage (1990) analysed 66 sexual assault cases using Smallest Space Analysis and identified clear common patterns of behavior.
What is a strength of using computer databases?
makes this approach much more scientific than top down typologies
What is geographical profiling?
used to make inferences about where an offender is likely to live. This is also known as crime mapping
What does Canter’s Circle theory (1993) propose?
two models of offender behavior
- marauders (commit crimes close to home)
- commuters (travel away from home to offend)
What is evidence that support geographical profiling?
Lundrigan & Canter (2001) collated evidence from 120 murder cases and found that the offender’s home base was invariably located in the centre of the crime scene pattern
