Top down approach to offender profiling

What is the aim of the top down approach?

To narrow down the list of likely suspects for a crime by analysing evidence from the crime scene

Where did this approach originate from?

America

Give an example of where the data used by the FBI comes from

Interviews

What is this data used to create?

Two criminal categories

What are the two criminal categories?

Organised

Disorganised

Characteristics of an organised offender x3

Usually married/have children

High IQ

Evidence of crime being planned

Characteristics of a disorganised offender x3

Usually live alone near the crime scene

Low IQ

Little evidence of planning - spontaneous crime

What do these categories correlate with?

Particular set of social/psychological characteristics related to the individual

Name the 4 stages which make up an FBI profile construction

Data assimilation

Crime scene classification

Crime reconstruction

Profile generation

A03 Strength: Research support for organised category

Canter et al

Smallest space analysis used

Found subset of behaviors matching organised offenders

Key components of approach has validity

A03 Strength: Can be adapted to other types of crime

Recently applied to burglary

led to 85% increase in solved crimes in the US

Adds 2 new categories : Interpersonal and opportunistic

Has wider application that originally assumed

A03 Limitation: Evidence for top down profiling was flawed

FBI agents did not select a random/large sample

Interviews were not standardised - each was different so not comparable

Approach doesn’t have a valid scientific basis

A03 Limitation: Multiple contrasting characteristics

Offenders may not fit into only one type of category

Organised-disorganised typology is more of a continuum

Approach can only be applied to a certain type of offender

Reduces generalisability