The Bottom up approach.
Background information.
This approach was developed by Canter and uses investigative psychology more than the FBI approach.
Canters Geographical profiling saw the crime scene as a source of information. The behaviour of the offender at the crime scene would reveal information about their everyday life and characteristics.
Although Canter also analysed behaviour of convicted offenders, this is a much more bottom up approach as the focus is on the unique circumstances of an individual offender
key assumptions of the approach.
interpersonal coherence - There is a consistency between the way offenders interact with their victims and with others in their everyday lives.
Time and Place - The time and place of an offender's crime will communicate something about their own place of residence or employment
criminal characteristics - Characteristics about the offender can help t classify hem, which helps the police investigation.
Criminal Career - Crimes tend to be committed in similar fashion by offenders and can provide indication of how their criminal activity will develop
Forensic awareness - Offenders who show an understanding of a police investigation are likely to have had previous encounters with the criminal justice system.
Geographical profiling.
Canter and youngs identified that there are a number of telling clues regarding the place crimes are committed in relation to the offender.
Principles of geographical Profiling.
Geographical profiling is a form of bottom-up profiling and takes particular note of the principle of time and place as mentioned above.
Locatedness - In any violent crime, it may be tat several locations are relevant.
Systematic crime location choice - This is the assumption that crime scenes are not random. The offender will likely have some kind of connection with the are or at least familiarity.
Centrality - As crimes are likely to occur in a familiar area to the offender, this means that crime scenes tend to cluster. Here there are two types of an offender that can require further analysis.
comparative case analysis - This is the assumption that the crimes are being committed by the same offender and therefore increses the precision of geographical profiling.
The Circle theory
The circle theory proposes two models of offender behaviour. People operate within a limited spatial mind-set that creates imagined boundaries in which crimes are likely to be committed.
The marauder The offender operates in close proximity to their home base
The commuters - The offender is likely to have traveled a distance away from their usual residence.
Evaluation.
This approach enables police forces to identify if a person is committing more than one criminal offence and identifies patterns in criminal behaviout.
This approach considers more objective from the top down approach as it focuses on and is based on data analysis and a theoretical basis of human behaviour.
This approach is seen to be holistic as it focuses on cognitive-social approach to psychology, a criminals interaction with others are see key to their behaviour.
one limitation is that the data is purely corrlational, meaning two varibles fllow the same pattern and theefore cant determine cause and effect and determine the cause of the offenders behaviour.
It is questionable to whether it is applicable to all types of crime as it relies on patterns of behaviour across perpetrators.