Offender Profiling:Top Down Approach Flashcards
What is the top down approach used for?
Used by police to investigate crime - aim is to narrow the field of enquiry- usually used in high profile cases
What do methods include?
Scrutiny of the crime scene and analysis of evidence in order to generate hypotheses about the offender including age, gender, background, education
Where did the approach originate?
In the United States as a result of the FBI’s Behavioural Science Unit which drew on the data gathered by 36 sexually motivated serial killers including Ted Bundy and Charles Manson
What is the approach also known as and what does it involve?
Typology approach - match what is known about the crime and the offenders pre-existing template that the FBI develop
Murders and Rapists classified as organised or disorganised on the basis of the evidence - this in turns informs the police investigation
What do serious offenders often have?
Signature ways of working/ Modus Operandi and they correlate with a particular set of psychological and social characteristics that relate to the individual
What are some of the things that organised offenders will display?
Show evidence of having planned the crime in advance
Victim is targeted and will reflect a ‘type’
Maintain a degree of control operating with precision
Little evidence left at scene
Above average intelligence, skilled, professional and socially/sexually competent
Usually married with Children
What are some of the things that disorganised offenders will display?
Show little planning suggesting offences are often spontaneous/ spur of the moment
Crime scene reflects impulsive nature of the attack
Body is still at the scene and there is very little control
Tend to have lower than average IQ and are engaged in semi-skilled or unskilled occupations
History of unsuccessful relationships or sexual dysfunction
Tend to live alone and live close to where offence takes place
What are the four main stages in constructing an FBI profile?
Data assimilation - profiler reviews the evidence
Crime scene classification (organised/ disorganised)
Crime reconstruction - hypotheses of events
Profile generation - hypotheses related to likely offender e.g. demographic, background, behaviour etc
Who is Ted Bundy?
A notorious serial killer from the US who during the 1970’s raped, tortured and murdered over 30 women across 7 states
What was Bundy’s background?
He was handsome and successful - used this to lure his victims, he attended uni and then law school - while a student he fell in love with a wealthy woman who later broke his heart - many of his victims resembled his girlfriend who was attractive with long dark hair
How did Bundy operate and what happened to him
He often raped his victims before beating them to death
After escaping custody twice he was executed by the electric chair - it was typology approach that profiled him and helped catch him
What is a weakness of this approach?
It only applies to certain crimes - it is suited to crime scenes that reveal important details about the suspect such as rape, cult killings, as well as those involving sadistic torture etc
offences such as burglary and vandalism don’t lend themselves to profiling as very little about offender discovered at crime scene
How is it based on outdated models of personality?
Based on the assumption that offenders have patterns of behaviour and motivations that remain consistent across situations
Critics (Alison) suggested it is naïve and based on models that view personality as being driven by stable dispositional traits rather than external factors that may be constantly changing
Based on static models of personality - poor validity when identifying criminals
How does evidence not support the disorganised offender?
Canter et al - used smallest space analysis analysed data from 100 murders in the USA - details of each case examined with reference to 39 characteristics thought to be typical of organised or disorganised killers - findings did suggest there was an organised type but not disorganised therefore undermining the classification system
What is a strength of the approach?
Still used as a model by professional profiling in the US and has widespread support
