Offender profiling: the bottom-up approach. Flashcards
Definition of the bottom-up approach.
Profilers work up from evidence collected from crime scene to develop hypotheses about characteristics, motivations, and social backgrounds of the offender.
Definition of investigative psychology.
form of bottom-up profiling (BUP), matches details from crime scene with stat analysis of typical offender behaviour patterns based on psych theory.
What were the 3 features of Canter’s model of interpreting crime scenes in investigative psychology?
Interpersonal coherence- the way an offender behaves at the scene (victim interaction) may reflect behaviour in everyday situations.
Time and place significance- help locate where offender is living.
Forensic awareness- describes individuals who’ve been subject of police interrogation before, behaviour indicate how mindful they’re of covering tracks.
Definition of geographical profiling.
Form of BUP based on principle of spatial consistency- an offender’s operational base and possible future offences are revealed by geographical location of previous crimes.
Why is geographical profiling the basis of Canter’s circle theory and what description has it lead to?
Because pattern of offending forms a circle around offender’s home base.
Leading description of offenders in one of two ways:
- The marauder- operates near their home base.
- The commuter- travel a distance away from their usual residence.
What does spatial decision-making do?
Provides insight into the offence’s nature (planned/opportunistic, transport, mental map).
Describe the Railway Rapist as an example of the use of geographical profiling.
Duffy carried out 24 SA and 3 murders of women near railway stations.
Canter analysed geographical info from crime scenes, combined with details of similar attacks in the past.
Profile on Duffy drawn up, lead to arrest.
Describe a strength of investigative psychology, in terms of supportive evidence.
Canter and Heritage analysed 66 SA cases using smallest spaces analysis.
Behaviour identified as common in different behaviour samples, lack of reaction to the victim.
Everyone displayed characteristic of behaviour, helped established whether two or more offences committed by same person.
Supports principles of investigative psych that pp are consistent in their behaviour.
Describe a counterpoint of investigative psych having supporting evidence.
Case linkage depends on if historical cases are solved.
The fact they were solved may be because it was relatively straightforward to link the cases- circular arrangement.
Suggests investigative psych tells us little about crimes that have few links between them, so remain unsolved.
