Top Down And Bottom Up Approach Content

Question 1

What is the main aim of offender profiling?

Answer 1

Not to catch a suspect, more to narrow down potential subjects

Question 2

What is the general difference between top down and bottom up approach to offender profiling?

Answer 2

Top-down = classification of crime scene and typologies to data
Bottom-up = data created on crime scene and profile built, then classification

Question 3

Where was the top-down approach developed and what for?

Answer 3

In the US by the FBI to try and solve some of the most extreme murder cases, designed to produce a profile of the most likely offender.

Question 4

Which offending profiling approach has more reasoning to it?

Answer 4

Bottom-up as there is more science and logic applied to create a profile, where the top-down approach relies on an intuitive approach where you get a ‘feel’ for the type of person that would have committed the crime

Question 5

Which study outlined the six stages of the top-down approach?

Answer 5

Douglas et al 2006

Question 6

What are the 6 stages in the top-down process?

Answer 6

1. Profiling inputs
2. Decision process model
3. Crime assessment
4. Criminal profile
5. Crime assessment
6. Apprehension

Question 7

What happens during the profiling inputs stage of top-down profiling?

Answer 7

Data collected describing:
. The crime scene
. Background info about victim e.g employment
. Details of crime e.g cause of death autopsy report

Even trivial data should be collected to create a general classification of the crime scene to narrow down who would fit the circumstances

Question 8

Why shouldn’t possible suspects be considered in the profiling inputs stage of top-down profiling?

Answer 8

As this may bias the information collected as you may go and search for components of the crime scene that match the suspects character

Question 9

What happens in the decision process models stage of top-down profiling?

Answer 9

The profiler organises the data into meaningful patterns and tries to make some decisions from the data:
. Murder type - mass, spree, serial
. Time factors - was the crime at night or during day, long or short time
. Location factors - was crime scene same as murder scene?

Question 10

What are the three murder types and what do they mean?

Answer 10

Mass murder = one incident without any significant time interval
Spree killing = more than one murder over short period of time
Serial killing = more than one murder over extended period of time

Question 11

What are the two typologies of offenders?

Answer 11

Organised and disorganised

Question 12

What happens during crime assessment in top-down profiling?

Answer 12

Once data has been organised, the data can be classified as disorganised or organised, creating a link between the type of offences committed and the offender (typologies - how different offenders would carry out a crime scene)

Question 13

What are features of an organised type of offender?

Answer 13

. Planned and specifically targeted victim
. Weapon usually hidden after crime
. Body transported from scene
. Intelligent
. Socially and sexually competent
. Usually live with a partner

Question 14

What are features of a disorganised offender?

Answer 14

. Unplanned and randomly selected victim
. Sexual acts performed after death on body

Question 15

What happens during the criminal profiling stage of the top-down approach?

Answer 15

A profile on the offender is created including:
. Hypotheses about likely background, habits and beliefs
. Important to anticipate how the offender will respond to investigative efforts e.g how they would respond in an interview

Overall: creating a strategy to launch an investigation to catch offender

Question 16

What happens during the crime assessment stage of the top-down approach?

Answer 16

A written report on everything discussed in the previous steps is given to investigating agencies e.g police and individuals who match the profile are evaluated as potential offenders.

If none of the suspects are identified or there is new evidence, all goes back to step 2

Question 17

What happens during the apprehension stage of the top-down approach?

Answer 17

Once a suspect has been apprehended (likely confirmed offender), the whole profile-generating process is reviewed to ensure conclusions at each stage were legitimate e.g valid and the process can then be revised for future cases

Question 18

What is the bottom-up approach?

Answer 18

An offender profiling approach driven by data where statistical techniques are used with specific data from the crime scene to produce predictions on likely characteristics of the offender

Question 19

What are the two types of data-driven approaches that are in the bottom-up approach?

Answer 19

. Investigative psychology
. Geographic profiling

Question 20

What are the main features of investigative psychology?

Answer 20

. Interpersonal coherence
. Forensic awareness
. Smallest space analysis

Question 21

Who developed the bottom-up approach?

Answer 21

David Canter, a psychologist who proposed that profiling should be based on psychological theory and research, rather than just ‘getting a feel’ of what’s going on

Question 22

What is investigative psychology?

Answer 22

A form of bottom-up profiling based on psychological theory

Question 23

What is interpersonal coherence?

Answer 23

. The fact that individuals are consistent in their behaviour means there will correlations between elements of their crime and how they behave in everyday life.
. However, some people’s behaviour changes over time, so looking at differences in crimes for that individual over 4 years could help get clues.

Question 24

What is forensic awareness?

Answer 24

The fact that some behaviours can reveal:
. An awareness of some police techniques that may have been bypassed e.g checking fingerprints
. Past criminal experience

Simply the criminals may ‘know the criminal game’ and know how to get around it, but this knowledge can follow patterns e.g Davies et al (1997) found rapists who conceal fingerprints (show forensic awareness) often had previous burglary conviction.

Question 25

How did Canter come up with geographical profiling?

Answer 25

He realised criminals don’t just reveal themselves through committing the crime itself but also through the location the crime is committed.
- the Location of a crime can say a lot about an offender

Question 26

What happens in geographical profiling?

Answer 26

The locations of a connected series of crimes are analysed and these things are considered:
. Where the crimes were committed
. Spatial relationships between different crime scenes
. How the previous two things could relate to offender’s place of residence