Offender Profiling: The Top Down Approach Flashcards
What is offender profiling?
Offender profiling is based on telegram idea that the characteristics of an offender can be deduced from the characteristics of the offence and crime scene.
What is the main sum of offender profiling?
The main aim is to narrow the field of enquiry and list of key suspects
What are the methods of offender profiling?
Methods may vary, but the compiling of a profile will usually involve careful scrutiny of the crime scene, and, analysis of the evidence to generate a hypothesis of the characteristics of the offender.
Where does the top down approach originate?
In the US in 1970 as a result of FBI work
What did the Behavioural Science Unit do in their research?
The Behavioural Science Unit used data from interviews with 36 sexually motivated killers
What is the top down approach also known as?
The typology approach
Profilers who use this method match an offender to a crime using a pre-existing template.
What are offenders classified as?
Organised or disorganised on the basis of evidence
What is significant about serious offenders
Serious offenders have signature ways of working that generally correlate with a particular set of characteristics
What are the four stages of constructing and FBI profile?
- Data assimilation
- Crime scene classification
- Crime reconstruction
- Profile generation
What is data assimilation
The profiler reviews the evidence (crime scene photos, DNA etc.)
What is crime scene classification
Either organised or disorganised
What is crime reconstruction?
Hypothesis in terms of sequence of events, behaviour of the victim etc
What is profile generation
Hypothesis related to the likely offender eg demographic background, physical characteristics, behaviour etc
