Offender profiling

Question 1

What is an offender profile?

Answer 1

outlines the type of person likely to have committed the crime

Question 2

What is an offender profile based on?

Answer 2

prior experiences and uses computer databases to analyse what is already known

Question 3

What does the phrase top-down refer to?

Answer 3

an approach, which starts with the big picture and then fills in the details

Question 4

In the 1970s what did the FBIs behavioural science unit do?

Answer 4

gathered data from 36 sexually motivated serial killers, including Charles Manson & Ted Bundy to develop this approach to Offender Profiling

Question 5

What did Hazelwood and Douglas publish in 1980s?

Answer 5

heir account of the ‘lust murderer’, they advanced a theory that lust murderers are mainly catergorised by two types

Question 6

What are the two types of lust murders?

Answer 6

• Organised

- Disorganised

Question 7

What is an organised offender?

Answer 7

• ordered life
• kills after a critical life event
• Actions are premeditated and planned
• Bring weapons and restraints to the scene
• High intelligence and employed

Question 8

What is a disorganised offender?

Answer 8

• 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

Question 9

What is an issue with top-down profiling?

Answer 9

• Reductionist as the classification system is too simple
• Offenders are simply not disorganised or organised?
• They may be both

Question 10

What is an issue with application of top-down typology?

Answer 10

can only be applied to sexually motivated serial killers; because of the limitations of the originally sample that they interviewed: - sexually motivated serial killers!).

Question 11

What is a bottom-up approach?

Answer 11

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

Question 12

Who is Canter (1990)

Answer 12

The UK’s foremost profiling expert

Question 13

What does Canter’s (1990) approach do?

Answer 13

looks for consistencies in offenders’ behavior during the crime. Canter’s most famous case is that of the ‘Railway Rapist’ John Duffy

Question 14

Who is John Duffy?

Answer 14

Sex offender

carried out 24 sexual attacks and 3 murders of women near railway stations in North London in the 1980s

Question 15

What did Canter do to capture John Duffy?

Answer 15

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

Question 16

What is a strength of the bottom-up approach?

Answer 16

as wider applications; it can be applied to other crimes, not just sexually motivated serial killers like top-down

Question 17

What is an issue with the over-use of the bottom-up approach?

Answer 17

Over use could lead to miscarriages of justice. E.g. Paul Britton’s misleading profile in the hunt for the killer of Rachel Nickell

Question 18

What does investigative psychology use?

Answer 18

Computer databases and a programme called Smallest Space Analysis

Question 19

What do the Computer databases identify?

Answer 19

Patterns

and to look for possibilities to see if a series of offences are linked

Question 20

What is central to investigative psychology?

Answer 20

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

Question 21

What evidence support investigative psychology?

Answer 21

Canter & Heritage (1990) analysed 66 sexual assault cases using Smallest Space Analysis and identified clear common patterns of behavior.

Question 22

What is a strength of using computer databases?

Answer 22

makes this approach much more scientific than top down typologies

Question 23

What is geographical profiling?

Answer 23

used to make inferences about where an offender is likely to live. This is also known as crime mapping

Question 24

What does Canter’s Circle theory (1993) propose?

Answer 24

two models of offender behavior

• marauders (commit crimes close to home)
• commuters (travel away from home to offend)

Question 25

What is evidence that support geographical profiling?

Answer 25

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