Offender Profiling (Bottom up)

Question 1

What is offender profiling?

Answer 1

A behavioural and analytical tool that is intended to help investigations accurately predict and profile the characteristics of unknown offenders.

Question 2

What is the bottom up approach?

Answer 2

Profilers work up from evidence collected from the crime scene to develop hypotheses about the likely characteristics, motivations and social background of the offender.

Question 3

How does bottom up profiling differ from top down offender profiling?

Answer 3

Top down is based on typologies whereas the bottom up is data driven and emerges as the investigator engages in more deeper scrutiny of the research.

Question 4

What are the two methods used by the bottom-up approach?

Answer 4

Investigative psychology and geographic profiling.

Question 5

What is investigative psychology?

Answer 5

Attempt to apply statistical procedures alongside psychological theory.
This is in order to develop a statistical database which then acts as a baseline for comparison.

Question 6

What are three important components of investigative psychology?

Answer 6

Interpersonal coherence
Significance of time and place
Forensic Awareness

Question 7

What is interpersonal coherence in investigative psychology?

Answer 7

The way that an offender behaves at the scene, including how they interact with the victim may reflect their behaviour in more everyday situations.
Might tell the police something about the offender.

Question 8

What is the significance of time and place in regards to investigative psychology?

Answer 8

Might indicate where the offender lives.

Question 9

What is the significance of forensic awareness in regards to investigative psychology?

Answer 9

Describes those individuals who have been subject of police interrogation before, their behaviour may denote how mindful they are of covering their tracks.

Question 10

What is geographical profiling?

Answer 10

A form of bottom up profiling based on the principle of spatial consistency - that an offenders operational base and possible future offences are revealed by the geographical location of their previous crimes.

Question 11

In regards to geographical profiling what is the least effort principle?

Answer 11

If an offender has an option between 2 criminally attractive places they will choose the one closest to them to carry out their crime

Question 12

In regards to geographical profiling what is distance decay?

Answer 12

The number of crimes will reduce the further away from the offenders base until they become confident. However offenders leave a buffer zone around their house to decrease chances of being recognised.

Question 13

What is the circle of gravity theory?

Answer 13

Criminals have limited mindsets and the crimes they commit radiate out from their homes creating a circle.
The majority of the time, if a circle is drawn that encompasses all of a series of linked crimes with the furthest crimes on the rim of the circle, the offender will be based somewhere within the circle.

Question 14

What is a maurader?

Answer 14

Operate in close proximity to their home

Question 15

What is a commuter?

Answer 15

Likely to have travelled a distance away from their usual residence.

Question 16

How does Canter & Heritage (1990) provide support for the bottom up approach?

Answer 16

Conducted an analysis of 66 sexual assault cases.
Several behaviours were identified as common in different samples of behaviour, such as the use of impersonal language and lack of reaction to victim. Each individual displayed a characteristic pattern of such behaviours and this can help establish whether two or more offences were committed by the same person (case linkage).

Question 17

What are the police departments views on the bottom up approach and why does this support it?

Answer 17

Copson (1995) surveyed 48 police departments and found that the advice provided by the profiler was judged to be ‘useful’ in 83% of cases, which suggests it is a valid investigative tool

Question 18

Why might the bottom up approach be better than the top down approach?

Answer 18

bottom-up approach can be applied to a much wider range of crimes. For example, most burglaries are similar in method and so a top-down approach won’t reveal much about the offender’s profile. However, geographical profiling only requires the locations of the crimes, and so this bottom-up approach can be applied to basically every type of crime

Question 19

How might the dark figure of crime relate to the bottom up approach?

Answer 19

As with investigative psychology, the success of geographical profiling may be reliant on the quality of data that the police can provide. Unfortunately, recording of crime is not always accurate, can vary between police forces and an estimated 75% of crimes are not even reported to the police in the first place

Question 20

Is there any evidence to suggest the bottom-up approach isn’t accurate?

Answer 20

Copson (1995) study revealed that in only 3% of cases did it lead to the accurate identification of the offender! The Rachel Nickell case offers a stark reminder of how profiling can be misused.