Profiling: Bottom-Up Approach

Question 1

What is offender profiling (in general)?

Answer 1

A behavioural and analytical tool that is intended to help investigators accurately predict and profile characteristics of unknown criminals.

Question 2

What are the two major parts of the bottom-up approach?

Answer 2

Investigative psychology and Geographical profiling.

Question 3

What is forensic awareness?

Answer 3

The idea that certain behaviours may reveal an awareness of particular police techniques and past experiences.

Question 4

What is investigative psychology?

Answer 4

A form which matches details from the crime scene with statistical analysis of typical offender behaviour patterns based on psychological theory.

Question 5

What is meant if an offender is expressive impulsive?

Answer 5

They are uncontrolled, in the heat of strong emotions, they may feel provoked by the victim.

Question 6

What is geographical profiling?

Answer 6

Profiling based on the principle of spatial consistency: the idea that an offender’s operational base can be revealed by locations of their previous crimes.

Question 7

What is meant if an offender is Instrumental opportunistic?

Answer 7

‘instrumental’ means using murder to obtain or accomplish something. ‘opportunistic’ meaning the offender took the easiest opportunity.

Question 8

Who developed investigative psychology?

Answer 8

Canter (1944).

Question 9

What are the two models of offender profiling proposed in offender profiling?

Answer 9

The marauder and the commuter.

Question 10

Interpersonal coherence is central to investigative psychology, what is Interpersonal coherence?

Answer 10

The idea that people are consistent with their behaviours and therefore, there will be links with elements of the crime and their everyday life.

Question 11

Salfati and Canter (1999) found what using smallest space analysis?

Answer 11

They analyses the co-occurrence of 48 crime scenes and were able to identify three underlying themes:

1. Instrumental opportunistic
2. Instrumental cognitive
3. Expressive impulsive

Question 12

Who proposed the circle theory in geographical profiling?

Answer 12

Canter and Larkin, (1993).

Question 13

What is meant if an offender is Instrumental cognitive?

Answer 13

A particular concern about being detected and therefore the crime is more planned.

Question 14

Give an example of how forensic awareness can be used during profiling.

Answer 14

Davies (1997) found that rapists who conceal fingerprints often had previous burglary convictions.

Question 15

What is smallest space analysis?

Answer 15

A statistical technique which he developed to find correlations between crime scenes and offender characteristics.

Question 16

What does CGT stand for?

Answer 16

Criminal Geographic Targeting.

Question 17

What is CGT?

Answer 17

A computerised system which creates a 3D map displaying spatial data related to time, distance, and movement to and from crime scenes (a jeopardy surface).

Question 18

Who was the first to describe the technique of geographical profiling?

Answer 18

Kim Rossmo (1997).

Question 19

Who developed CGT?

Answer 19

Rossmo.

Question 20

What is a jeopardy surface?

Answer 20

A map created by the CGT system.

Question 21

What is a marauder?

Answer 21

A person who operates in close proximity to their home base.

Question 22

What is the function of a jeopardy map?

Answer 22

It helps investigators to make educated guesses on where the offender will strike next.

Question 23

What is a commuter?

Answer 23

A person who is likely to have travelled a distance away from their usual residence.

Question 24

AO3 - Evidence for Investigative psychology.

Answer 24

Canter and Heritage (1990) conducted a content analysis (qualitative) of 66 sexual assault cases, the data was examined using smallest space analysis. Several characteristics were identified as common in most cases and these characteristics occurred in different patterns in different individuals. This supports the usefulness of investigative psychology as it shows the application of statistical techniques.

Question 25

AO3 - Circle theory is a waste.

Answer 25

Petherick (2006), circle theory is not particularly useful because if the offender’s home base is not in the centre of the circle, police waste time looking in the wrong place which wastes time and money. The representation of ranges in terms of circles is also over-simplistic, this wastes time and government money.

Question 26

AO3 - Rachel Nickell.

Answer 26

In the case of Rachel Nickell, the police profiling report lead them to chasing a guilty person. The actual murderer was found and it turned out he had been ruled out of the original investigation because he was several inches taller than the profile. This shows that profiling can mislead the police and let the actual criminal away.

Question 27

AO3 - John Duffy.

Answer 27

John Duffy (the ‘Railway Rapist’) was captured in the 1980’s with the aid of bottom-up profiling. Canter produced a profile of Duffy that was surprisingly accurate which shows the use of profiling to the police.

Question 28

AO3 - Mixed police results.

Answer 28

Copson surveyed 48 police forces and found that the advice provided by the profiler was judged to be ‘useful’ in 83% of cases, but in only 3% of cases did it lead to accurate identification of the offender. The little use suggests that it is not actually very useful and is a waste of government funding.

Question 29

AO3 - Wider applications.

Answer 29

The bottom-up is also seen as having more real-life application than it’s American counterpart, this is because it can be applied to more types of crimes including petty ones such as shoplifting as they are purely concerned with geographical location.

Question 30

AO3 - Evidence for circle theory.

Answer 30

Canter and Larkin (1993) provided evidence for circle theory in a review of 45 sexual assaults. However, 91% of offenders were marauders. If almost all of these offenders are marauders, having this classification does not seem very useful, therefore, it can be a waste of time to find out as most people would be marauders.