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Offender Profiling - Coggle Diagram
Offender Profiling
The Top Down Approach :flag-us:
Developed by the BSU (Behavioural Science Unit)
36 convicted murderers were interviewed (1979-1983 with 118 known victims between them - including Charles Manson and Ted Bundy)
As a result of their response 24 were classified as organised offenders and 12 disorganised offenders. This typology is the Top Down Approach.
Organised offenders
The victim is deliberately targeted - they have a type
They have a high degree of control during the crime - there is little evidence left at the crime scene
They have planned the crime in advance
They tend to be of above average intelligence, skilled profession, socially and sexually competent
Disorganised offenders
Little evidence of planning - suggesting that the crime may be spontaneous
Crime scene tends to reflect impulsive nature of the attack - body left at the scene, little control by the offender
Hazelwood and Douglas (1980)
- suggested that offenders are "just murderers" who typically conduct unplanned crimes where the victim is not targeted
They tend to have lower than average IQ
Unskilled work or unemployment, history of sexual dysfunction and failed relationships, tend to live alone
Modus Operandi
- Mode of operating - a signature which correlates with a particular set of social and psychological characteristics that relate to the individual.
How they construct the profile
Crime scene classification
- either organised or disorganised
Crime scene reconstruction
- hypothesis in terms of sequence of events, behaviour of the victim etc
Data assimilation
- profiler reviews the evidence from the crime scene
Profile generation
- hypothesis related to the likely offender e.g. demographics, background, characteristics, and behaviour
Evaluation of Top Down Approach
Method was developed by the FBI who use it to help identify perpetrators - means it has ecological validity as it arose out of actual practice :check:
Only applied to particular crimes, mostly only useful in cases of murder and rape so it is a limited way of investigating crime :red_cross:
Based on outdated models of personality -
Alison et al (2002)
have suggested that this approach is naive and is informed by old fashioned models of personality that see behaviour as being driven by stable dispositional traits rather than external factors :red_cross:
Bottom Up Approach :flag-gb:
Geographical Profiling :world_map:
Rossmo (1997)
refers to offender behaviour as having "hunting patterns", and through examining the locations of crime scenes and their spatial relationships to each other, we can know more about where the criminal is located
Canter's Circle Theory (1993)
Marauders
(commit crimes close to home)
Commuters
(travel away from home to offend)
Geographical profiling involves analysing the location of a connected series of crimes, and looking at factors such as the spatial relationship between the different crime scenes and what this reveals in relation to the perpetrator.
David Canter is the main researcher in this field. Sometimes known as the British Approach, is a data-driven approach that makes use of statistical data on similar crimes in order to make predictions about the characteristics of an offender.
Investigative Psychology :mag_right:
Time and place
(the time and location of an offender's crime will communicate something about their own place of residence/employment
Criminal characteristics
(characteristics about the offender can help to classify them, which helps the police investigation)
Interpersonal coherence
(there is a consistency between the way offenders interact with their victims and with others in their everyday life)
Evaluation of Bottom Up Approach
Canter & Heritage (1990)
analysed 66 sexual assault cases using Smallest Space Analysis and identified clear common patterns of behaviour.
(means evidence supports investigative psychology) :check:
The use of computer databases and Smallest Space Analysis makes this approach much more scientific than top down typologies :check:
Bottom Up has wider applications; it can be applied to other crimes, not just sexually motivated serial killers like Top Down :check:
Profiles can be useful but police must be careful not to be blinded to other possibilities by them. Occasionally criminals do not fit the profile. An example is Paul Britton's misleading profile in the hunt for the killer of Rachel Nickell :red_cross: