Offender profiling: top-down approach Flashcards
Top-down approach
originated in America in 1970s, and was based on a series of interviews the FBI carried out with 36 sexually motivated serial killers such as Ted Bundy.
Profilers start with a pre-established typology and match what is known about the offender and their crimes into one of two categories.
Organised offenders
- Evidence of planning in advance
- often have a ‘type’ of victim (Ted Bundy often killed young women with brown centre-parted hair)
- high degree of control & precision in crime
- above average intelligence
- skilled/professional occupation
- socially competent
- ‘typical’ sexual history, may have wife & children
- unlikely to leave evidence or clues accidentally.
Disorganised offenders
- Little evidence of planning
- lack of control - high degree of brutality/over kill
- evidence of clues left (no cleaning up)
- lower than average IQ
- socially & sexually dysfunctional
- often have unusual sexual interest (necrophilia/bestiality)
- Unskilled worker or unemployed
- Often lives alone and local to the offence.
The four stages to the construction of an FBI profile:
Data assimilation: review of available evidence
Crime scene classification: detectives categorise offender
Crime reconstruction: sequence of events & behaviour of victim is speculated on
Profile generation: hypotheses are constructed about the offender.
Evaluation weakness: evidence for the approach is mixed
Canter et al (2004) found support for organised type but no support for a consistent disorganised type when carrying out an analysis of 100 murders.
Evaluation weakness: issues with FBI original research
The sample only consisted of 36 killers, 25 of whom were serial killers. It could be argued that their data was unrepresentative of most criminals (less valid profiling). also using self-report interviews is likely to be unreliable.
Evaluation weakness: too simplistic
An offender with high intelligence and sexual competence could commit an impulsive murder and leave the body at the scene, which would make classification difficult or impossible.
Evaluation weakness: only applied to certain crimes
crimes such as burglary or assault do not often have crime scenes useful for classifying an offender.
Evaluation weakness: Holmes (1989)
suggested four types of offender: visionary (kill due to delusions of control), missionary (target specific ‘undesirable group), hedonistic (kill for pleasure) and power/control (dysfunctional personality).
