Offender profiling: Top down approach

Question 1

Offender profiling:

Answer 1

• investigative tool to narrow down the fields of enquiry of a suspect
• generates a hypothesis about characteristics of an offender

Question 2

Top down approach:

Answer 2

• developed in the US in the 70s
• carried out by the FBI
• Based on the unstructured interviews with 36 sexually motivated serial killers
• Uses evidence from a crime scene to fit to pre-existing categories to determine the type of offender
• E.g. Weapons, witness statements, testimony

Question 3

Organised offender:

Answer 3

• offender has a signature way of working
• plan their crimes in advanced
• have a ‘type’ of victim that they target
• High intelligence
• leave limited clues behind

Question 4

Disorganised offender:

Answer 4

• offence is spontaneous
• crime scene looks impulsive
• low intelligence
• unemployed and live alone

Question 5

Construction an FBI profile:

Answer 5

1. Data assimilation - collect forensic evidence and witness statements
2. Crime scene classification - organise vs disorganised
3. Crime reconstruction - hypothesise a sequence of events and behaviour of the victim
4. Profile generation - hypothesis related to the demographic and behaviour of the offender

Answer 6

Limitation of the top-down approach: too simplistic
- categorising offenders as either organised or disorganised
- some offenders may be both (high IQ and impulsive crime)
- There could also be more than 2 types of offender - interpersonal or opportunistic
- not a comprehensive approach

Answer 7

Limitation of the top-down approach: Temporal validity:
- Based on interviews from the 70s
- Therefore the profiles that were created then may not reflect how modern criminals act
- Been advances in the way that criminals can work and act

Answer 7

Limitation of the top-down approach: Unstructured interviews
- Canter = In the original interviews there was no standardisation of the questions
- This means that not all the serial killers were asked the same questions
- This means that the interviews would’ve been difficult to compare
- Could lead to the results being invalid due to the unscientific nature

Answer 8

Strength of the top-down approach: Application to other types of crime
- E.g. Burglary
- May be identified as organised or disorganised
- Meketa found that the application of the top-down approach when looking a burglaries led to 85% success rate