The top down approach Flashcards
Offender profiling
Offender profiling is an investigative tool used by the police when solving crimes.
• Aim is to narrow down the list of suspects.
• Careful scrutiny of crime scene.
• Analysis of other evidence.
→ Hypothesis about the offender.
• Age
• Background
• Occupation
• Characteristics.
The American approach
The top-down approach to profiling originated in the US as a result of work carried out by the FBI in the 70s.
• Interviews with 36 sexually motivated serial killers.
• Determined that data could be split into 2 categories.
• Organised and disorganised.
• Certain characteristics → predictions can be made.
• Profilers gather data and then assign to a category.
• Typology approach.
Organised and disorganised offenders
The categorization of organised and disorganised offenders is based on the assumption that serious offenders have a certain signature, which correlated to the social and psychological characteristics.
Organised:
Evidence of planning
Have a type
High levels of control
Tidy - no clues or evidence
Above average intelligence.
Skilled/professional employment
Socially and sexually competent
Married, possibly with kids.
Disorganised:
Little evidence of planning
Spontaneous, spur of the moment
Little control
Crime scene reflects impulsivity
Below average intelligence
Unskilled work or unemployed
History of sexual/relationship dysfunction
Live alone and close to the crime scene.
Ted Bundy-organised offender
• By 1972 he had graduated law school and showed great promise in a career in law or politics
• A charming, intelligent and articulate young man.
• Had a girlfriend
• Preyed on young women
• Used a ruse, often wearing his arm in a sling or his leg in a fake cast and walking on crutches
• Arrested after fleeing a patrol car - A search of the vehicle yielded masks, handcuffs, rope.
• Many victims were never found
• Confessed to 30 murders, but actual number is not known.
Richard Chase-disorganised offender
• The Vampire of Sacramento
• In and out of mental heath institutions
• Lived on his own.
• No social life no girlfriend
• Abused drugs and alcohol
• No victim type
• Murders were opportunistic
• Walked the streets checking doors. “If the door was locked that meant you weren’t welcome.”
• No effort to conceal crimes.
• Was ultimately identified by someone he went to school with
• Six murders
Constructing a profile
There are four main stages in the construction of an FBI Profile.
1. Data assimilation.
Reviewing Evidence.
2. Crime scene classification-organised/disorganised.
3. Crime reconstruction
Hypothesis in terms of sequence of events, behaviour of victim and suspect.
4. Profile generation
• Hypothesis relating to the likely offender.
strength-research support
There is support for a distinct organized category of offender
• Canter (2004) analysis of 100 US murders committed by different serial killers.
• Smallest space analysis - statistical technique that identifies correlations across different samples of behaviour.
• In this case the analysis was used in order to assess the current occurrence of 39 aspects of serial killings.
• Torture or restraint; attempt to conceal; murder weapon; cause of death.
Revealed that there does seem to be a subset of features of many serial killings which matched the FBI is typology for organized offenders
counterpoint-However many studies suggest that the organized and disorganized types may not mutually exclusive
Maurice Godwin (2002) - it is difficult to classify killers as one or the other type.
• Could have multiple contrasting characteristics.
• High intelligence and sexual competence, but commit a spontaneous murder, leaving the body at the crime scene.
Could mean that the typology is more of a continuum, rather than one or another.
Strength-Wider application
A strength of the top down approach is that it can be adapted to other crimes.
• Meketa (20017) reported that the top-down approach had been recently applied to burglary → 85% rise in solved cases in three separate US states.
• Organised and disorganised remain
• Interpersonal and opportunistic have been added.
Suggests that the approach has a wider application than was originally assumed.
limitation-poor sample
The top down approach was based on interviews conducted with 36 murderers (25 serial killers)
• Then classified as either organized or disorganized.
• Sample is poor.
• Unrepresentative
• Not random or large
• No standard questions → no comparison possible.
• Self-report may not be ideal given the sample.
All suggests that the top-down approach does not have a sound scientific basis.
6 marker
The top-down approach to profiling originated in the US as a result of work carried out by the FBI in the 70s.
Interviews were carried out with 36 sexually motivated killers and it was found that that the data gathered could be categorized into 2 categories, each with its own set of behavioural and psychological characteristics.
If in the future, the data from a crime scene matched some of the characteristics of one category, that category could then be used to predict other characteristics and help to narrow down the list of suspects.
Organised offenders show evidence of having planned the crime in advance. The killer generally has a type and maintains a high degree of control during the crime. They also leave little evidence or clues behind and tend to be above average intelligence and socially and sexually competent, often married with children.
Disorganised offenders tend to display the exact opposite characteristics. They generally show little planning, leave clues and evidence at the crime scene, don’t have a type and tend to be below average intelligence.
modus operandi
a distinctive way they commit crimes-criminal signature
