Offender profiling: top down approach

Offender profiling

An aspect of police work that consists of building a personality profile a criminal whose identity is unknown. The profile can then be used to help find the criminal and bring them to justice

• became standard procedure in the 1950s

• FBI created the Behavioural Science Unit, which extensively studies crime scenes and conducts interviews with known criminals to thoroughly develop theories of behavioural patterns

Top down approach

• American approach developed in 1980s by Robert Ressler

• Based on interviews with 36 sexually-motivated murderers

• Aims to fit criminals into pre-defined profiles to help identify the criminals

• Criminals are divided into 2 typologies (organised or disorganised)

• TDA takes information from the criminals Crime scene and then classifies it as either typology

Stages of classification

1. Data assimilation: investigators gather information from multiple sources

2. Crime scene classification: profilers decide whether the crime scene represents an organised or disorganised offender

3. Crime reconstruction: hypotheses are generated about what happened during the crime

4. Profile generation: profilers construct a ‘sketch’ of the offender, including demographic, physical characteristics and behavioural habits.

Organised murder

Type of murder- crime is planned, leaves few clues at the scene

Characteristics of offender- above average IQ, competent, experiencing anger

Tactics used by police during interviews- use a direct strategy

E.g. Ted Bundy/ Jack the Ripper

Disorganised murder

Type of murder- little planning, little attempt to leave nothing at the crime scene

Characteristics of offender- lives alone, competent, sever forms of mental illness

Tactics used by police during interviews- show empathy, interview during the night, use a counsellor type of approach

Strengths of the top-down approach

1. Standardised procedure- the top-down approach uses a standardised procedure to profile criminals through 4 distinct steps: data assimilation, crime scenes classification, crime reconstruction, and profile generation. This suggests that this approach may be useful for identifying sexually motivated murderers, and ultimately bringing them to justice.

2. Based on evidence- the organised and disorganised profiles were developed by the FBI from interviews and data from 36 US murderers. This suggests that the theory has empirical evidence to support the profiles of organised and disorganised crime.

Weaknesses of the top-down approach

Limited application- only works for some types of criminals (e.g. those that are dangerous and sexually motivated). This is because their behaviour is often similar meaning patterns can be identified. However, for lesser crimes patterns are harder to find. Therefore, this approach lacks population validity and generalisability to all crimes