Offender profiling Flashcards
What is offender profiling?
An investigative tool employed by the police when solving crimes, the main aim of which is to narrow the list of likely suspects
What is the top-down approach?
It uses information from the crime scene to categorise murderers as ‘organised’ or ‘disorganised’ killers
Who was the top-down approach developed by?
The FBI in the 1970s from interviews with 36 sexually motivated serial killers
What are the characteristics of an ‘organised’ killer?
- Show evidence of advanced planning
- Deliberately target victim
- Reflects perpetrator’s “type”
- Maintain high degree of control
- Body likely to have been moved
- May operate with “detached surgical precision”
- Above average intelligence, in skilled/professional occupation, socially/sexually competent
- Usually married and may have children
What are the characteristics of a ‘disorganised’ killer?
- Little evidence of planning
- Spontaneous/spur of the moment
- Scene reflects impulsive nature of attack
- Body in situ
- Little evidence of control on offender’s part
- Lower than average intelligence, in unskilled work or unemployed
- History of sexual dysfunction/failed relationships
- Live alone and close to scene
What are problems with the top-down approach?
- Assumptions about stable types
- Subjective judgements
- Issues for reliability
- Simplistic
- Only applies to a limited number of crimes, such as sexually motivated murder
What is the bottom-up approach?
The aim is to generate a picture of the offender (characteristics, routine behaviour, social background) through analysis of the crime scene.
This method then builds a picture of the potential criminal from facts and figures collated from previous crimes of the same type
What are the 2 things that the bottom-up approach includes?
Investigative psychology and geographical profiling
What is geographical profiling?
The idea that a criminal will commit crimes within a locational radius
What did Rossmo state?
Rossmo (1997) stated that an offender’s operational base of possible future offences are revealed by the geographical location of their crimes
What are the 3 principles which help shape a profile?
Locatedness, Systematic crime location choice and centrality
What is locatedness?
Some crimes have several locations and they are all really important from a profiler’s point of view. Locations include:
→ Where the victim is met initially
→ Where the attack occurs
→ Where the victim is actually killed
→ Where the body is disposed of
What is systematic crime location choice?
This principle states that locations are not random. Familiarity to the offender is important.
What is centrality?
This principle states that there are 2 types of offenders: commuters and marauders
What do commuters do?
Commuters travel to commit the crime (but is likely to be somewhere that is familiar to them)
What do marauders do?
Marauders commit crimes close to home
What does centrality mean?
The crimes must cluster
What is the circle theory?
Circle theory proposes two models of offender behaviour. People operate within a limited spatial mindset that creates imagines boundaries in which crimes are likely to be committed.
What is investigative psychology?
Patterns that occur or co-exist across crime scenes are used to generate data about the offender. It is based on psychological theory of matching behavioural patterns to generate data on the offender.
What are the assumptions of investigative psychology that underpin the crime, specifically what happens between the victim and offender?
Interpersonal coherence, significance of time and place and forensic awareness
What is interpersonal coherence?
The way in which an offender behaves at the scene. How they interact how they act in everyday life
What is the significance of time and place?
This may indicate where the offender is living if the crimes take place within the same forensic
What is forensic awareness?
This focuses on those who have been the focus of police attention before. Their behaviour may denote how mindful they are of covering their tracks
What is the evidence for investigative psychology?
Canter (1990) conducted an analysis of 66 sexual assault cases using smallest space analysis. Several behaviours were identified as common, such as the use of impersonal language and lack of reaction to the victim.
This can help establish whether 2 or more offences were committed by the same person.
This supports one of the basic principles of investigative psychology (and bottom-up approach) that people are consistent in their behaviour.
