Offender profiling: Bottom up approach Flashcards
British Bottom up approach:
- Data driven approach
- Uses statistical information to find relationships between crimes
- E.g Official crime stats (CSEW), Police data bases
- Used for serial crimes (as you can look at the relationships)
the bottom up approach is based of two principles:
- Investigative psychology
- Geographical profiling
Investigate psychology:
- Attempt to apply statistical procedures and psychological theory to crime
- the aim is to establish a pattern of behaviours likely to occur across crime scenes
- This helps develop a statistical database which can act as a baseline for comparison
4 different concepts involved in investigative psychology
- Interpersonal coherence
- Significance of time and place
- Criminal career
- Forensic awarness
Interpersonal coherence:
- The way an offender behaviour at a scene
- E.g. How they interact with the victim could reflect their everyday behaviour
- Some rapists want to maintain control whereas other are apologetic
- Could tell ye police about how the offender generally acts around women
Significance of time and place:
- Key variable may indicate where the offender is located/ employed
Criminal career:
- Characteristics of a crime create a pattern
- Shows how criminal activity develops
Forensic awarness:
- If previously in trouble, offender would know forensic techniques used
- Allows for an offender to plan ahead
Geographical profiling:
- Spatial behaviour of offenders and crimes
- Uses data regarding crime scene location and local knowledge to provide information about the offender
Canter circle theory:
- serial offenders restrict their work to areas that they are familiar with
- This provides investigators with centre of gravity
- Distribution of an offence leads to two different descriptions
- Marauder: Operates in close proximity to their home base
- Commuter: Travels a distance away from their usual residence
- Helps investigators with an insight into the offender
Strength of investigative psychology: Research support
- Carter and Heritage
- 66 sexual assaults
- Found relationship between language and behaviour to the victim
- Shows evidence of interpersonal coherence
- Allowed investigators to establish whether two cases/crimes where linked to one offender
Strength of Geographical profiling: Supporting study
- Supports the circle theory
- Lundrigant and Canter
- 120 murder cases of serial killers in the US
- Smallest space analysis - spatial consistency in behaviour
- Location of body disposal created a centre of gravity with the offenders base located centrally
Strength of bottom up approach: Valid methologogy
- Based on statistical data
- Not based of intuition or self-report
- means that it is objective rather than subjective
- COUNTERPOINT:
- Police records aren’t always accurate
- Dark figures of crime - unreported crime
- Hampers the ability to form a complete profile
Limitation of bottom up approach : Not effective
- 85% of police force found profiling useful but it only resulted in 3% of correct identification
- Not fully accurate in creating a complete solution/ answer to the problem
