Offender Profiling: The Top-down Approach

Question 1

What is offender profiling?

Answer 1

An investigative tool used by the police when solving crimes with the main aim of narrowing down a list of likely suspects.

Question 2

When and why will professional profilers often be called upon?

Answer 2

Often called to work alongside the police especially during high-profile murder cases.

Question 3

What does compiling of a profile usually involve?

Answer 3

Careful scrutiny of the crime scene and an analysis of other evidence to generate hypotheses about the likely characteristics of the offender.

Question 4

Where did the top-down approach to profiling originate from?

Answer 4

The USA as a result of the FBI in the 1970s.

Question 5

What did the FBI’s behavioural science unit draw upon?

Answer 5

Data gathered from in-depth interviews with 36 sexually-motivated murders including Ted Bundy and Charles Manson.

Question 6

What did the FBI Behavioural Science Unit conclude?

Answer 6

The data can be categorised into organised and disorganised crimes/ murders.

Question 7

What does each category of the criminals characteristics have and what does this help with?

Answer 7

Each category has certain characteristics which means that in future cases if the data from a crime scene matched some of the characteristics of a category we could predict other characteristics which could be used to find the offender.

Question 8

What will offender profilers who use the top-down method do?

Answer 8

Collect data about a murder such as characteristics of the murderer and then decide on the category the data best fits.

Question 9

What is the distinction of organised and disorganised offenders based on?

Answer 9

The idea that serious offenders have signature ‘ways of working.’ And these generally correlate with a particular set of social and psychological characteristics that relate to the individual.

Question 10

Organised offenders

Answer 10

• Evidence of having the crime being planned.
• Victim is deliberately targeted which suggests a ‘type of victim’.
• Offender maintains a high degree of control.
• May operate with almost surgical precision.
• Little evidence or clues left behind.
• Tend to be above average intelligence in a skilled job.
• Usually socially and sexually comptetent.
• Usually married and also sometimes have children.

Question 11

Disorganised offenders

Answer 11

• Little evidence of planning suggesting the offence may be spontaneous.
• Crime scene tends to reflect impulsive nature of the attack - body is usually still there and there appears to have been little control.
• Lower than average IQ.
• In unskilled employment or unemployed.
• Often have a history of sexual dysfunction and failed relationships.
• Tend to live alone and relatively close to where the offence occurred.

Question 12

What are the four main stages in construction of an FBI profile?

Answer 12

1. Data assimilation
2. Crime scene classification
3. Crime reconstruction
4. Profile generation

Question 13

What is data assimilation?

Answer 13

The profiler reviews the evidence.

Question 14

What is crime scene classification?

Answer 14

Either disorganised or organised.

Question 15

What is crime reconstruction?

Answer 15

Hypotheses in terms of sequence of events, the behaviour of the victim etc.

Question 16

What is profile generation?

Answer 16

Hypotheses related to the likely offence

Question 17

Evaluation: Research support

Answer 17

Support for a distinct organised category of offender.
Canter et al conducted analysis of 100 US murders each committed by a different serial killer.
Smallest space analysis was used to identify correlations across different samples of behaviour.
In this case analysis was used to assess the co-occurrence of 39 aspects of serial killings.
This revealed that there is subset features of many serial killings which matched the FBI’s typology of organised offenders.
This suggests FBI typology approach has some validity.

Question 18

Counterpoint of research support

Answer 18

Many studies suggest the organised and disorganised types aren’t exclusive.
There are a variety of combinations that occur at any given murder scene.
Godwin argues it is difficult to classify killers as one or other type and that a killer could have multiple contrasting characteristics.
This suggests the organised-disorganised typology is probably more of a continuum

Question 19

Evaluation: Wider application

Answer 19

Top-down approach can be adapted to other crimes such as burglary.
Meketa reports top-down profiling has recently been applied to burglary leading to an 85% increase in solved cases in three US states.
This suggests the top-down approach has wider application than was assumed.

Question 20

Evaluation: Flawed evidence

Answer 20

Canter et al argued the sample used by the FBI to develop FBI profiling was poor as the FBI agents didn’t select a random or large sample and the sample didnt include different types of offenders.
Each interview was different and not comparable because there was no set questions.
Suggests top-down profiling doesn’t have a sound, scientific basis.