Offender Profiling - Top-down Approach

Question 1

What is offender profiling?

Answer 1

• An analytical tool the police use that aims to narrow down the field of enquiry and the list of suspects
• It helps investigators predict and profile characteristics such as gender, age, employment etc. of the criminal based on close scrutiny of the crime scene

Question 2

Top-down profiling

Answer 2

• A deductive approach to offender profiling that applies pre-determined typology/ideas to crime scene data
• In TDP, these typologies (organised and disorganised) are based on the concept of offenders having signature methods that reflect their personality traits

Question 3

Where did top-down profiling come from?

Answer 3

• ## Originated from the FBI’s Behavioural Science unit that used data from interviews with 36 sexually-motivated offenders

Question 4

Organised offender

Answer 4

• Used to describe offenders who show evidence that they are prepared to commit crimes in advance.
• They are often socially and sexually competent, in high-skill occupation, and have higher than average intelligence.

Question 5

Features of an organised offender at a crime scene

Answer 5

• Offender plans the crime in advance
• Offender deliberately targets victim
• Offender aims for a type of victim
• Little evidence left at scene

Question 6

Disorganised offender

Answer 6

• The opposite of an organised offender:
• An offender who shows little evidence of planning in advance of the crime (spontaneous), has a lower than average intelligence, is socially and sexually incompetent.

Question 7

Features of a disorganised offender at a crime scene

Answer 7

• Crime is spontaneous
• Body left at scene
• Maintains little control during crime
• Live relatively close to the scene

Question 8

Stage 1 of constructing an FBI profile

Question 9

Stage 2 of constructing an FBI profile

Question 10

Stage 3 of constructing an FBI profile

Question 11

Stage 4 of constructing an FBI profile