top down approach

Question 1

What is offender profiling?

Answer 1

Is an investigative tool used by police when solving crimes.

main aim is to narrow the field of enquiry and list the likely suspects

Question 2

what is top down approach

Answer 2

American approach
originated from USA

As result of work carried out by FBI behavioural science unit in 1970s

Gathered in depth interviews with 36 sexually motivated serial killers.

Offender profilers who use this method will match what is known about crime and offender to pre pre-existing template that the FBI developed.

Murders and rapists are classified in two categories: organised and disorganised.

Question 3

Organised offender

Answer 3

offender
1. who shows evidence of planning

2. targets specific victims
3. tends to be socially and sexually competent

4.higher than average intelligence

Question 4

Disorganised offender

Answer 4

offender who shows little evidence in planning, leaves clues tends to be socially and sexually incompetent with lower average intelligence.

Question 5

How do you construct an FBI profile?

Answer 5

Data assimilation = profiler reviews evidence

Crime scene classification = either organised or disorganised

Crime reconstruction = hypothesis in terms of sequence of events, behaviour of the victim

Profile generation = hypothesis related likely offender e.g demographic background, physical characteristics and behaviour.

Question 6

evaluation

Answer 6

Only applies to particular crimes
Top down profiling is best suited to crime scenes that reveal important details about the suspect such as rape, arson and cult killings. More common offences such as burglary and destruction of property do not lend themselves to profiling because crime scene reveals very little about the offender. This means it limited approach to identifying a criminal

Based on outdated models of personality
Typology classification system is based on the assumption that offenders have patterns of behaviour and motivation that remain consistent across situations and contexts. Alison et al 2002 suggest this approach as naive and informed by old fashion models of personality that see behaviour as being driven by stable dispositional traits rather than external factors that are constantly changing
This means the top down approach is based on “static” models of personality; it is likely to have poor validity when it comes to identifying possible suspects.

Evidence does not support the disorganised offender
David canter et al 2004 using a technique called “smallest space analysis” analysed data from 100 murders in the USA. Each case was examined with reference to 39 characteristics thought to be organised and disorganised killers. Although evidence showed a distinct organised type this was not the case for disorganisation this undermined the classification system as whole.