Top-down approach Flashcards
What is offender profiling?
An investigative tool used by the police when solving crimes. Main aim is to narrow the list of likely suspects. . Crime scene is analysed to generate hypotheses about probable characteristics of the offender.
Outline the origin and processes of the top-down approach.
Developed 1970s in America FBI. Typology formed from interviews with 36 sexually motivated murders including Ted Bundy.
Investigators begin with a pre-established typology and analyse the crime scene to categorise the offender into one of two types:
Organised -disorganised distinction based on the idea that serious offenders have certain ways of working.
Organised criminals: high IQ, sexually and socially competent, plan crimes, target specific victims, leave little evidence at crime scene.
Disorganised criminals: low IQ, low paid job, relationship issues and sexual incompetence, impulsive crime- not pre-planned, leave evidence at crime scene.
FBI profile assembly:
- Data assimilation: profiler reviews evidence
- Crime scene classification as either organised or disorganised.
- Crime reconstruction: hypotheses in terms of sequence of events, behaviour etc.
- Profile generation- hypotheses related to the likely offender.
Evaluate.
+ Research support: organised offender category- Canter analysed 100 US murders using smallest space analysis and found features of the serial killings that fit the FBI’s typology for organised offenders.
- Organised and disorganised types can occur in combination: Godwin suggests it is difficult to classify killers due to them often having multiple contrasting characteristics. Richard Ramirez for example displayed varying characteristics and this therefore would make him difficult to categorise. May exist on continuum.
+Wider application: Meketa found in a meta- analysis that when opportunistic and interpersonal categories were also included it led to an 85% increase in solved burglary cases in 3 US states.
- Flawed evidence: the evidence the FBI used to develop the top-down approach is limited as the sample did not include different types of offenders.
