Top-down approach to offender profiling

Offender profiling

an investigative tool used by the police to narrow down suspects of a highly serious crime. It involves analysing and studying evidence from the crime which can then be used to generate hypotheses about the likely characteristics of the offender

Top-down approach

Originated in the 1970s by the FBI's Behavioural Science Unit.

Based on in-depth interviews with 36 sexually-motivated murderers, including Ted Bundy and Charles Manson.

• From this data, profilers created two key categories of offenders:

  • Organised

  • Disorganised

• The idea is that behaviours at a crime scene reflect the offender’s personality, allowing investigators to match traits to suspects.

organised offender

crime is planned

victim is targeted

smart, good job

married, often with kids

socially and sexually competent

controlled

little/no clues at scene

disorganised offender

spontaneous/unplanned

random victim

lives alone, often near crime scene

sexually and socially dysfunctional, often unlucky in relationships

low IQ, poor job

messy crime scene - often body still there

little/no control

constructing an FBI profile

1. Data assimilation - review evidence (e.g from witness reports, crime scene analysis)

2. Crime scene classification - organised or disorganised

3. Crime reconstruction - hypotheses on what happened e.g. series of events

4. Profile generation - Profile of likely offender e.g. characteristics, age etc

Research support for organised offenders

Canter et al. (2004) used smallest space analysis on data from 100 serial killings.

Looked at patterns (e.g. torture, body concealment, weapon use).

Found a subset of features consistently matched the organised offender category.

This supports the idea that at least part of the FBI typology has validity, particularly the organised category.

Typology Is Too Simplistic

Many real-life offenders show a mix of organised and disorganised features.

Godwin (2002): It's hard to neatly classify offenders. E.g., a killer might be intelligent (organised) but leave the body at the scene (disorganised).

This suggests the classification may be a false dichotomy and offender types are better seen as a continuum.

Wider Application (Beyond Murder)

Originally believed to only work for sexually motivated serial murder.

But Meketa (2017) reported that applying it to burglary led to an 85% increase in case closures in three US states.

• Two new categories were added:

  • Interpersonal: offender knows victim, takes meaningful items

  • Opportunistic: inexperienced, young offender

This shows top-down profiling can be adapted to non-violent crimes.

Flawed Foundational Evidence

Based on 36 murderers, mostly serial killers.

Unrepresentative (not random, not diverse) and interview methods were inconsistent.

Canter et al. argued there was no scientific rigour — undermines the credibility.

This weakens the method's scientific foundation and suggests it may lack reliability and generalisability.

Assumes Personality is Consistent

Based on the idea that offenders have a consistent modus operandi.

But situationist psychologists like Walter Mischel (1968) argue behaviour is context-dependent, not fixed.

This questions whether patterns at a crime scene really reflect personality, or just the circumstances of that particular event.