Top Down Approach Flashcards
What is offender profiling?
Investigative tool employed by the police when solving crimes. Main aim to narrow down the field of enquiry of likely suspects
What is the top down approach?
- start with pre-established typologies
- work down in order to assign either organised or disorganised
What’s an organised offender?
- high IQ
- evidence of planning
- target victim
- little clues left
- sexually and socially competent
What’s a disorganised offender?
- low IQ
- no/little evidence of planning
- clues left
- sexually and socially incompetent
Constructing an FBI profile
- Data assimilation
- crime scene classification
- crime reconstruction
- profile generation
What is data assimilation?
Views evidence from crime scene ( e.g. photographs, pathology reports)
What is crime scene classification?
Organised or disorganised
What is crime reconstruction?
Hypothesis of sequence of events, behaviour and victim
What is profile generation?
Hypothesis related to likely offender (e.g. demographic background, physical characteristics, behaviour)
AO3: only applied to particular crimes such as…
Rape and murder
Unlike the bottom-up approach which can apply to all crime
AO3: Copson (1995)
Conducted questionnaire on 184 police officers
82% useful
90% would use again
AO3: Douglas et al. (1992)
Suggested mixed offender category, but would reduce usefulness of classification.
AO3: Canter et al. (Smallest space analysis)
Compared 100 murders to 39 control group
Distinct organised category
But sub-categories of unorganised
So does not support
