Top Down Approach Flashcards
What is the purpose of offender profiling?
A tool used by the police to help them analyse and predict the behaviour and characteristics of unknown offenders.
Profiling involves scrutinising the crime scene and other evidence to generate hypotheses about the offender.
Why is it important to profile different types of offenders?
To help narrow the list of likely suspects.
What is the top-down approach to offender profiling?
Begins by looking carefully at the crime scene and drawing conclusions from the evidence found there about the offender.
What types of crimes is the top-down approach typically used for?
More extreme crimes, such as murder and rape.
What was a significant study conducted by the FBI in the 1970s regarding the top-down approach?
Gathered data from detailed interviews with 36 murderers, including Ted Bundy and Charles Manson.
What two categories of crime did the FBI conclude from their study?
- Organised
- Disorganised
What is the modus operandi in relation to organised and disorganised offenders?
Based on their ways of working, which tends to correlate with the offender’s social and psychological characteristics.
What are characteristics of organised offenders?
- Evidence of premeditation
- Have a ‘type’ of victim
- High degree of control
- Leave little clues
- Tend to be intelligent and competent
What are characteristics of disorganised offenders?
- Little evidence of planning
- Messy crime scene
- Lower than average IQ
- May be unskilled or unemployed
- Tend to have a history of failed relationships
What are the stages of constructing an FBI profile?
- Data assimilation
- Crime scene classification
- Crime reconstruction
- Profile generation
What is a strength of the top-down approach?
There is research support for the top-down approach.
What did Canter et al. (2004) find in their analysis of murders?
Identified correlations of behaviour that matched the FBI’s typology of organised offenders.
What additional categories did Meketa (2017) suggest for burglary profiling?
- Interpersonal
- Opportunistic
What is a weakness of the top-down approach?
It lacks a strong evidence base.
What criticism did Canter et al. have regarding the FBI’s profiling sample?
The sample was poor, not large or random, and lacked standardisation.
What does the top-down approach assume about serial offenders?
That every serial offender has a modus operandi.
True or False: Mischel (1968) argued that personality is more influential than the situation a person is in.
False
