Offender Profiling Flashcards
What is offender profiling?
A description of an offender.
What are the two main types of offender profiling?
Typology approach
Geographical approach
What are the two features of these crimes?
Corpus delecti
Modus operandi
What is the corpus delecti?
The evidence from the crime.
What is the modus operandi?
The method of the crime.
Holmes and Holmes identified three major goals to profiling. What are they?
Social and psychological assessments
Psychological evaluation of belongings
Interviewing suggestions
Who identified the three main goals of profiling?
Holmes and Holmes
What is the typology approach based on?
Interviews of 36 convicted criminals
What does the typology approach focus on?
The characteristics of the offender
What did the FBI interview the criminals about?
Their background, crime scenes and victims.
What two categories did the FBI develop from their interviews?
Organised and Disorganised
According to the typology approach, what is meant by an organised criminal?
Crime scenes are planned and lack evidence
The offender is intelligent and socially competent
According to the typology approach, what is meant by disorganised?
Crime scene has physical evidence and the crime was spontaneous
The offender is not intelligent and lacks social skills.
Give three characteristics of the organised offender.
Intelligent
Has a good job
Socially and sexually competent
Give three characteristics of the disorganised offender.
Not well educated
Unskilled work or unemployed
Spontaneous attack
Why type of approach is the typology approach?
A top-down approach
Jackson and Berkerian say the FBI approach has four stages, what are they?
Data Assimilation
Crime Classification
Crime Reconstruction
Profile Generation
What is Data Assimilation?
Collection of information
What is Crime Classification?
Categorising the crime into either organised or disorganised.
What is Crime Reconstruction?
Re-enact the crime and develop a hypothesis.
What is Profile Generation?
Creating a profile of the offender.
Who argued there were four stages to the typology approach?
Jackson and Berkerian
Who argued that the typology approach should add in a third category of mixed offenders?
Douglas
Who has evidence to support that the typology approach has some use?
Pinizzotto and Finkel
What evidence do Pinizzotto and Finkel have for the typology approach?
They compared the profiles of trained profilers, students, FBI officers and clinical psychologists in a sex case and homicide. They found that the trained profilers were more accurate in the sex case, but we’re no more accurate in the homicide.
What may negatively impact the profile in the typology approach?
If the information it is based on is untrue.
What is wrong with the basis of the typology approach?
The information was collected from convicted criminals, not including those who haven’t been caught.
Small sample.
What does the typology approach fail to take into account?
Individual differences between offenders.
Who devised the geographical approach?
David Canter
What type of approach is the geographical approach?
Bottom-up approach
What is used to develop a profile in the geographical approach?
Physical evidence from the crime scene
Canter identified three aspects of criminal behaviour. What are they?
Interpersonal coherence
Significance of time and place
Forensic awareness
What is meant by interpersonal coherence?
Consistencies in the treatment of victims
What is meant by forensic awareness?
Knowing if the offender has preciously been questioned by police.
What profile does the geographical approach arrive at?
The living or operational base of the offender.
The geographical approach used the assumption that…
Offenders work in areas they know well
What does the geographical information of the crime produce?
A mental map
The geographical approach uses a computer system called what?
The Criminal Geographical Targeting Spacial Data
What is the Criminal Geographical Targeting Spacial Data?
Data that relates to the distance, movement and travel time which produces a 3D jeopardy surface.
What is the main negative evaluation point about the geographical approach?
It searches for offenders based on what is most likely, but in some cases, what is most likely is actually incorrect.
What is wrong with the geographical approach’s focus?
It places too much emphasis on geographical data and not enough on psychological data.
What did Copson and Holloway find?
That geographical profiling only helped to solve 16% of cases.
Who found that profiling only solved 16% of cases?
Copson and Hollaway
What did Britton find?
That CID Chiefs found profiling useless in arrests but felt it had high potential.
Who found that geographical profiling had potential?
Britton
