offender profiling

Question 1

define crime

Answer 1

an act committed in violation of the law where the consequence of conviction by court is punishment (especially a serious punishment such as imprisonment)

Question 2

what are the issues with defining ‘crime’?

Answer 2

historical and cultural

Question 3

explain the historical issues with defining ‘crime’

Answer 3

historical issues show that what was considered a crime at one point in history, may not be considered a crime according to modern standards e.g. homosexuality only being illegalised in the UK in 1967, through the Sexual Offences Act of 1967

Question 4

explain the cultural issues with defining ‘crime’

Answer 4

cultural issues show that what some cultures see as a crime is not seen as a crime for others e.g. smacking a child may be seen as acceptable or a form of ‘tough love’ in some cultures whereas in the UK, smacking a child is now punishable by law according to the 2004 Child’s Protection Act

Question 5

what are the issues in measuring crime?

Answer 5

official statistics, victim surveys and offender surveys

Question 6

what are official statistics?

Answer 6

official statistics describe the number of crimes reported and recorded by the police, which have been processed and published by the Home Office annually

Question 7

what are victim surveys?

Answer 7

victim surveys involve 50,000 randomly selected households to self-report the number and types of crimes which have been committed against them during the past year, and is published by the Crime Survey for England and Wales annually

Question 8

what are offender surveys?

Answer 8

offender surveys target a randomly selected cohort of criminals, who give details of the types and frequency of crimes they have committed across a set time period, as recorded by the Offender Crime and Justice Survey. this is particularly useful for governmental organisations as a view of the patterns and risk factors for crime at a national scale, and so can be used to inform crime prevention/management strategies.

Question 9

evaluate official statistics

Answer 9

• unreliable as they significantly underestimate the true extent of crime, only 25% of offences are included in the stats, 75% are unreported (referred to as the ‘dark figure’ of crime) - may be due to a lack of standardisation of police recording policies in relation to crime as well as the victim fearing revenge or feeling untrustworthy of the police
• Farrington and Dowds (1985) - found that sudden increases in incidence rates of theft could be explained by a change in police recording policies where thefts under £10 were recorded - suggests that official statistics may be an inaccurate representation of crime

Question 10

evaluate victim surveys

Answer 10

+ ‘dark figure’ of crime is less likely to be concealed due to the self-report technique where individuals may feel that there are less repercussions for their actions
- victim surveys suffer from the serious methodological problems associated with self-report techniques e.g. ‘telescoping’ where the victim ma mistakenly believe that a crime had been committed against them significantly more recently than it did due to the trauma and distress associated with it

Question 11

evaluate offender surveys

Answer 11

+ provides insight into crime and is useful for crime prevention and management strategies due to showing the patterns and risk factors of offending behaviour - demonstrating a real-life practical application
- the data collected from Offender Surveys may be distorted or bias because it has been collected from offenders - they may want to over-exaggerate their crimes to give a feeling of accomplishment and grandeur or under-exaggerate to diminish responsibility - meaning that too much reliance cannot be placed upon the honesty and integrity of offenders in self-report measures

Question 12

what is the top-down approach?

Answer 12

american approach
uses a pre-established typology and the FBI method of profile generation to assign offenders to one of two categories: organised or disorganised offenders

Question 13

how does the top-down approach work?

Answer 13

narrows the field of enquiry and list of likely suspects
analysis of the crime scene and evidence
generate hypotheses = age, gender, ethnicity
based on witness accounts and evidence
to generate a profile of the offender

Question 14

origin of the top-down approach

Answer 14

FBI - Behavioural Science Unit 1970s
data gathered from in depth interviews with 36 sexually motivated killers

Question 15

what are the four steps of the top-down approach when generating a profile?

Answer 15

1. data assimilation
2. crime scene classification
3. crime reconstruction
4. profile generation

Question 16

what is data assimilation?

Answer 16

information is gathered from multiple sources (e.g. crime scene photos, police reports)

Question 17

what is crime scene classification?

Answer 17

profilers decide whether the crime scene represents an organised or disorganised offender

Question 18

what is crime reconstruction?

Answer 18

hypotheses are generalised about the occurrence of the crime

Question 19

what is profile generation?

Answer 19

profilers construct a sketch of the offender (e.g. demographic, physical characteristics, behavioural habits)

Question 20

what are the characteristics of organised offenders?

Answer 20

socially and sexually competent
most likely married and has a job
shows evidence of planning
unlikely to leave the body or clues at the scene
tend to have a specific ‘type’ of victim e.g. Ted Bundy
deliberate target
appear to carry out the attack in an almost surgical manner
high degree of control
above average IQ

Question 21

what are the characteristics of disorganised offenders?

Answer 21

show no evidence of planning
frequently leave the body and clues at the scene
attacks appear to be random
no specific target
more likely to occur close to their own home or operational base
socially and sexually incompetent
most likely lives alone and is unemployed
spontaneous
spur of the moment attacks
impulsive
below average IQ

Question 22

disorganised offenders evidence

Answer 22

Hazelwood and Douglas (1980) suggested that disorganised offenders are ‘lust murderers’ who typically conduct unplanned crimes where the victim is not targeted. the offender is unlikely to engage in conversation with the victim and sexual acts are sometimes performed on the body after death.

Question 23

evaluations of the top-down approach

Answer 23

• it has limited application to crime as it is only used for murder and rape crimes - it cannot be used in situations of robbery, theft or fraud
• it uses outdated models of personality - the typology classification system is based on assumptions of behaviour and motivations - approach is naive and informed by old-fashioned models of personality (Alison et al 2002)
  + it has been used in the USA for 50 years by the FBI when establishing profiles of criminals
• it is a reductionist approach - oversimplification - offenders cannot be simply divided into 2 categories - an offender may change their MO as they gain confidence in their killings thus changing the category in which they are put into (Keppel and Walter 1999)
• uses qualitative data which is more subjective as it relies on individual opinions
  + qualitative data gives insight into criminal processes, thoughts and behaviour
• original sample is too sample and doesn’t represent the entire population of offenders - used 25 serial killers - not sensible to rely on self report data of convicted killers (Canter)
• there is not much evidence to support the idea of disorganised offenders thus lacking validity

Question 24

what is the bottom-up approach?

Answer 24

british approach
develops a profile as the crime scene and eyewitness testimonies are increasingly analysed

Question 25

what are the two hallmarks of the bottom-up approach?

Answer 25

investigative psychology
geographical profiling

Question 26

what is investigative psychology?

Answer 26

the process whereby each crime is recorded onto a database. details of each new crime are matched with this database in order to develop hypotheses about the likely characteristics, social demographic and motivations of the offender.
there is a much greater emphasis on scientific methods of investigation and statistical analysis.

Question 27

how does investigative psychology work?

Answer 27

emphasises the importance of time and place
uses interpersonal coherence - looks at the way the offender behaves at the scene as how they interact with the victim may reflect how they act in everyday life
uses forensic awareness - describes those individuals who have been subjects of police interrogation before - they behaviour may denote how mindful they are about covering their tracks

Question 28

what is geographical profiling?

Answer 28

suggests that each offender has an operational base which can be inferred through mapping the locations of previous crimes, forming a circular shape where the operational base is at the centre
it can also be used to predict future crimes and can be used to create hypotheses about what the offender was thinking and their MO

Question 29

how does geographical profiling work?

Answer 29

based on the assumption that the way and signature of offenders in carrying out their crimes are constant (having the same MO)
offenders are classified into 2 categories based on where they operate

Question 30

explain the circle theory

Answer 30

according to Canter and Larkin (1993) offenders can be classified into two categories: the marauder and the commuter

Question 31

what is the marauder?

Answer 31

carries out crimes close to where they live or work

Question 32

what is the commuter?

Answer 32

carries out crimes far away from where they live or work

Question 33

evaluations of the bottom-up approach

Answer 33

+ the circle theory support - Rossmo (2000) suggests that in general, criminals offend close to their homes and the number of offences drops off with increasing distance from the base - this is supported by Godwin and Canter (1997) found that 85% of the offenders studied lived inside the circle encompassing their offences
+ investigative psychology support - Canter and Heritage (1990) conducted a content analysis of 66 sexual assault cases - found that impersonal language and lack of reaction to victim was common in most cases
+ relies on scientific methods of enquiry, statistical analysis and quantitative evidence which increases the validity of the method
- mixed results for profiling - Copson (1995) surveys 48 police forces and found that the advice provided by the profiled was useful 83% of the time but only 3% did it lead to accurate identification of the offender - this supported by Kocsis et al (2002) which argued there is little empirical research into the skills required for profiling