Offender Profiling: Top-Down Approach

Question 1

Is the method useful?
Copson (1995)
Scherer and Jarvis (2014)

Answer 1

C: questions 184 police officers and 82% said the technique was operationally useful and 90% said they would use it again

S&J: argue that the approach goes beyond just the identification of the offender; it offers investigators a different perspective for investigation and may prevent wrongful conviction

Question 2

the basis of the method flawed:

Answer 2

The original data that this approach was based on comes from interviews on the most dangerous and sexually motivated individuals. They were used to identify characters that would help police ‘read’ a crime scene. This is dubious as such individuals are not likely to be the most best source of reliable information.

Also the approach and the rationale may be quite different to more ‘typical’ offenders.

Question 3

Potential harm cause by using top-down approach:

Snook et. al (2008)

Answer 3

S: This approach is not based on any science or theory. The believability of profiles based on this approach maybe explain in terms of the Barnum effect - ambiguous descriptions can be made to fit any situation which explains why profile’s often appear to be right

This may be an issue because profiles may mislead investigation if they’re wrong

Question 4

Measuring the accuracy of the approach:

Alison et al. (2003)

Answer 4

The data on usefulness can also be questioned in terms of how usefulness is measured.

One way to measure it is to see how close the profile is to the actual offender.

A: suggests that such judgements aren’t reliable. In her study, police officers rated the profile they were given as accurate, even though half of them were given a fake version