The American Approach/ Inductive Profiling

Question 1

What 3 sources are used when conducting a criminal profile?

Answer 1

1. Formal+informal studies of known, incarcerated criminal populations
2. Practical experience of profiler
3. Public data sources (e.g newspaper articles)

Question 2

What are the assumptions? (4)

Answer 2

• criminals who commit the same types of crimes share similar characteristics
• offenders who have committed in the past are culturally similar to current offenders
• individual human behaviour can be generalised
• behaviour+motivation do not change within an individual over time

Question 3

Pros?

Answer 3

• easy tool to use as no specific forensic knowledge, education or training is needed
• short amount of time needed to make general profiles

Question 4

Cons?

Answer 4

• low reliability as generalising from a small sample
• low validity as does not generalise from current offenders, who may represent a group of highly skilled criminals
• misjudgements if an innocent person has some of the characteristics

Question 5

What does the American (or top-down) approach involve? (4)

Answer 5

• data assimilation= investigators gather info from multiple sources e.g police reports
• crime scene classification= decide whether an organised or disorganised criminal
• crime reconstruction= hypotheses generated about what happened
• profile generation= “sketch” of demographic+physical characteristics

Question 6

Hazlewood+Douglas pros and cons?

Answer 6

Pros:
✔️successfully used in Canada+Netherlands helping to solve a number of high profile cases
✔️useful when crime scene has evidence that easy to identify as organised/dis

✖️low validity as not based on psychological principles
✖️low reliability as subject to interpretation of profiler
✖️typologies limited to rapists+murderers

Question 7

Hazelwood+Douglas theory?

Answer 7

Organised offender:
•orderly life 
•kill after critical experience in life
•planning+control e.g bringing weapon/ restraints to scene 
•likely to use verbal approach to victim 
•likely to be of high intelligence
•social competence
•employment 

Disorganised offender:
•impulsive committing of crime
•crimes display no pre-planning or thought 
•likely to use items already at scene
•likely to be of less intelligence 
•less social competence

Question 7

Hazelwood and Douglas aim?

Answer 7

To test the reliability of organised/disorganised typologies

Question 7

Hazelwood and Douglas method?

Answer 7

• Content analysis using psychometric method of multi-dimensional scaling
• Small space analysis

Question 8

Hazelwood and Douglas PPs?

Answer 8

100 cases

Question 9

Procedure of Hazelwood and Douglas?

Answer 9

• 100 cases assessed to find out if features hypothesised to each typology would be consistently+distinctively different
• all cases from USA+was third crime committed by each serial killer analysed for research
• Crime Classification Manual (Douglas et al 1993) used to classify crimes as organised/dis from responses to interviews

Question 10

Findings of Hazelwood and Douglas?

Answer 10

•2x as many disorganised as organised crime scene actions identified- more disorganised criminals or easier to identify?
•only 2 organised behaviours consistent:
- body concealed in 70% of cases
- sexual activity in 75% of cases
•most other organised behaviours were not consistent across cases

Question 11

Hazelwood and Douglas conclusions?

Answer 11

• no distinction between 2 types of serial murder, all crimes will have an organised element
• differences between serial killers may be the ways they show disorganised aspects of crimes
• suggests a better way is to look at individual personality differences between offenders