top down approach

Question 1

what is offender profiling?

Answer 1

An investigative tool employed by the police when solving crimes, aiming to narrow down the list of likely subjects.

Question 1

Where is the top down approach carried out? By who?

Answer 1

Carried out in the United States as a result of war carried out by the FBI.

Question 2

What does the top down approach categorise criminal as?

Answer 2

Organised and disorganised

Question 3

what are characteristics of an Organised offender?

Answer 3

-show evidence of having planned the crime in advance
-victim is deliberately targeted suggesting the criminal has a ‘type of victim’
-high degree of control during the crime
-little evidence left at scene
-above average intelligence
-sexually competent

Question 4

what are characteristics of a disorganised criminal?

Answer 4

-little evidence of planning - spontaneous
-body may still be left at scene showing little control
-lower than average IQ
-unskilled or unemployed
history of sexual disfunction

Question 5

What are the 4 stages in the construction of an FBI profile -

Answer 5

1) data assimilation - reviewing / gathering evidence
2) crime scene classification - organised or disorganised
3) crime reconstruction - hypotheses in terms of sequence of events, behaviour of victim…
4) profile generation- hypotheses related to the likely offender ( demographic background, physical characteristics, behaviour)

Question 6

+ research support TOP DOWN

Answer 6

David Canter (2004) conducted an analysis of 100 US murders each committed b y different serial killers. - smallest space analysis was used. The analysis revealed that there does seem to be a subset of features of many serial killings which matched the FBI’s organised offenders
HOWEVER —–
many studies suggest that organised and disorganised types are not mutually exclusive - a variety of combinations can occur

Question 7

+ wider application TOP DOWN

Answer 7

Can be adapted to other kinds of crime - such as burglary
Tina Meketa - reports that top down has recently been applied to burglary leading to an 85% rise in solved cases in three US states

Question 8

-Overly simplistic- top down

Answer 8

The binary of organised offender and disorganised offender may be too simplistic as it’s likely many offenders won’t fit neatly into either category. For example, it’s possible that a high IQ person could commit a spontaneous and unplanned murder in a fit of rage. However, high IQ is a characteristic of the organised profile, but a spontaneous crime is characteristic of the disorganised profile and so sticking too rigidly to these offender profiles could lead to inaccurate profiling.