top down approach Flashcards
what is offender profiling?
An investigative tool employed by the police when solving crimes, aiming to narrow down the list of likely subjects.
Where is the top down approach carried out? By who?
Carried out in the United States as a result of war carried out by the FBI.
What does the top down approach categorise criminal as?
Organised and disorganised
what are characteristics of an Organised offender?
-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
what are characteristics of a disorganised criminal?
-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
What are the 4 stages in the construction of an FBI profile -
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)
+ research support TOP DOWN
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
+ wider application TOP DOWN
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
-Overly simplistic- top down
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.
