Offender profiling-Top down approach Flashcards
A01
What is Offender profiling?
A way to help identify the person who has committed a crime, its an investigator tool employed by police when solving crimes
Aim-narrow list of suspects
compiling a profile involves careful examination & analysis of crime scene in order to generate a hypothesis about characteristics of Offender e.g Age, gender, ethnicity
A01
What is the top down approach/The american approach?
Top down approach to offender profiling developed in the USA by the FBI
The FBI approach uses predetermined assumptions about behaviour at a crime scene to organise offenders into one of two categories:
organised/disorganised
The FBI gathered info from 36 in-depth interviews with sexually-motivated murderers & used data gathered to create two typologies of offender profiling
Outline Organised & disorganised type of offending
The idea of two distinct types of offender originates from the idea that serious offenders have a signature way of working ( their modus operandi)
Describe Organised Offenders:
Offenders that appear organised:
plan crime in advance
Have precision-like abilities & attention to detail in carrying out crime
target specific individuals - i.e. they have a ‘type’ of victim in mind
Rarely leave evidence or clues behind
Are sexually & socially competent
May be married with children
Have above-average intelligence
Are in a skilled professional occupation
Describe Disorganised Offenders:
Offenders that appear disorganised usually:
Show little evidence of planning
Are spontaneous or impulsive
Leave a crime scene that reflects the disorganisation - messy, little control over the crime/victim
May have a less than average IQ
unemployed or are in unskilled work
Have a history of sexual dysfunction /or failed relationships
Will probably be living alone or very close to where the crime was committed
Describe the 4 stages to constructing an FBI Profile
Stage 1. Data assimilation
Stage 2. Crime scene classification
Stage 3. Crime reconstruction
Stage 4. Profile generation
Explain the first stage of constructing an FBI Profile
Data assimilation
The profiler reviews the evidence (interviews, photos from the scene, evidence from the scene, toxicology or pathology reports etc.)
Explain the second stage of constructing an FBI Profile
Crime scene classification
The profiler decides where most characteristics fit: organised or disorganised
Explain the 3rd stage of constructing an FBI Profile
Crime reconstruction
They will then work on generating a hypothesis of what happened (timeline/order of events, sequences, behaviour of the victim, places involved)
Explain the 4th stage of constructing an FBI Profile
Profile generation
lastly, the profiler will generate hypotheses of the likely offender (behaviour, characteristics, demographics, background, location, physical characteristics etc.)
A03
Explain how The top down approach is reductionist
Limitation
Reductionist because the classification system of orginaised/disorganised offending is too simplistic.
Offenders are not simply disorganised or organised, it may be that there are organised/disorganised features to all crimes
Offender may start disorganised but become more organised as they develop their modus operandi & gain more experience with commiting crimes
A03
Wider application evidence-Meketa- solved burglary cases
Strength
Meketa (2017) found implementation of top-down profiling (with both typologies) has led to an 85% increase in solved burglary cases in the US, after adding two new categories: interpersonal & opportunistic
This finding shows that top-down approach has wider application than only explaining sexually-motivated crimes/murder, increasing its generalisability
A03
Top down appraoch only applies to particular crimes
Top down appraoch is best suited to crime scenes that reveal important details about suspect, like rape,arson or sadistic torture, dissection of body, more common offences such as bulgarly to not lend themselves to profiling, because resulting crime scene reveals little about offender-limited approach
