Top down approach

This contains both AO1 and AO3

What is the top down approach?

USA version of offender profiling and can also be referred to as typology

What is an organised offender?

The crime is planned out in advance, victim is targeted directly, above average IQ and usually married with children

What is a disorganised criminal?

little evidence of planning, spontaneous, broken relationships, isolated, rarely dispose the body or evidence and low IQ

How is the top down approach carried out?

• Crime scene is analysed and an offender profile is created based on age, gender, background and occupation.

• A data base is generated on the offender such as, motives, planning and preparation, details of crime and disposal of evidence

• Placed into either organised or disorganised

How is the FBI profile constructed?

• Data assimilation - profiler reviews the evidence e.g. (photos, pathology reports and interviews)

• Crime scene classification - organised or disorganised

• Crime reconstruction - timeline of events

• Profile generation - hypothesis related to the linked offender, age, background

Top down approach AO3: Strength (applied to different crimes)

• Can be adapted to different types of crimes such as burglary

• Some critics have claimed that it only applies to limited crimes however research shows that top-down profiling has been applied to burglary leading to an 85% rise in solved cases.

• This means the top-down approach has wider application

• Therefore has good practical value

Top down approach AO3: Strength (evidence)

• Support for a distinct organised category of offender

• Research on 100 murder cases committed by different serial killers carried out a statistical test which identified correlations.

• In this case it was used to test 39 occurrences in serial killing, torture, concealing the body etc and each serial killer could be placed into either organised or disorganised

• This is a reliable theory in which serial killers should be profiled

Top down approach AO3: Limitation (poor evidence base)

• Top-down approach is based on poor evidence

• Profiling developed using 36 murderers and 25 were serial killers. 24 were classified as organised and 12 disorganised

• It is argued that the sample is poor and did not include a rage o different crimes and offenders

• Therefore cannot be generalised to all crimes and offenders

Top down approach AO3: Limitation (organised and disorganised)

• Evidence suggests that organised and disorganised are not mutually exclusive

• There are a variety of of combinations that occur within a given murder

• This means It is difficult to classify killers as one or the other type

• Perhaps typology is a continuum and there isn't just two categories