Psychopathology

Question 1

What is offender profiling?

Answer 1

• way to narrow down list of suspect, used by police
• based on the idea that offender’s characteristics can be deduced from the detail of offence and crime scene
• involves careful scrutiny of crime scene, analysis of evidence including witness reports
• used to generate hypothesis of probable characteristics e.g age, background occupation etc.

Question 2

What is top-down approach and what are the two categories of offenders ?

Answer 2

• The two categories are organised offender and disorganised offender
• templates of the two pre-exist in the mind of the profiler
  -evidence from crime scene + crime/victim/context used to to fit offender into the two categories

Question 3

What evidence do organised offenders show and what are their characteristics?

Answer 3

• show evidence of planning ahead
• deliberately target victim
• victim reveals the fact that offender has preference for a certain type