Top Down Approach

Question 1

Offender profiling

Answer 1

• predicts and profiles characteristics of an offender

- creates a hypotheses of who the offender might be

Question 2

FBI top down approach

Answer 2

• Interviewed 36 sexually motivated murderers

- concluded that data could be characterised into organised or disorganised murderers

Question 3

Organised and Disorganised offenders

Answer 3

• each category has certain characteristics

- in future situations crime scenes could be matched

Question 4

Organised offender

Answer 4

• evidence crime was planned
• victim is deliberately targeted
• control is maintained
• little evidence
• high IQ
• in a professional occupation
• has a family
• sexually competent

Question 5

disorganised offender

Answer 5

• little evidence of planning
• offence is spontaneous
• crime scene left messy
• little control
• low IQ
• unskilled
• unemployed
• sexual dysfunction
• live alone

Question 6

Four stages of constructing an FBI profile

Answer 6

• Data assimilation (review of evidence)
• crime scene classification (organised/ disorganised)
• crime reconstruction (hypotheses in terms of sequence of events/ behaviour of victim)
• profile generation (hypotheses of likely offender)

Question 7

Evaluation

Answer 7

+ Research support - serial killers studied - seem to be a subset of features such as high intelligence and
sexual competence of serial killers - has validity
+ wider application - applied to burglary leading to an 85% rise in solved cases in the US
- Flawed evidence - small interview sample, similar kind of offender, non-standard questions