Top-down approach (and offender profiling)

Offender profiling

Used by police to narrow down list of suspects

Scene and other evidence analysed to generate hypotheses about the probable characteristics of the offender

Where did the top-down approach originate?

USA FBI in the 1970s

What is the organised and disorganised distinction based on?

The idea that offenders have signature ‘ways of working’, which generally correlate with a particular set of social and psychological characteristics that relate to the individual.

Organised offender

• Evidence of planning- victim is targeted and they may have a ‘type’ of victim

• High degree of control during the crime and little evidence left behind at the scene

• Above-average IQ and may be in a skilled/professional job

• Usually married and may even have children

Disorganised offender

• Little evidence of planning, suggesting the offence may have been spontaneous.

• Crime scene reflects the impulsive nature of the act e.g. body still at the scene and crime shows a lack of control

• Below-average IQ and may be in unskilled work or unemployed

• A history of failed relationships and living alone, possible history of sexual dysfunction

FBI profile construction stages

1. Data assimilation: review of evidence

2. Crime scene classification: organised or disoganised

3. Crime reconstruction: generation of hypotheses about behaviour and events

4. Profile generation: generation of hypotheses about the offender (background, physical characteristics)

AO3: Strength: Research support for an organised category

Canter looked at 100 serial killings. Smallest space analysis was used to assess the co-occurrence of 39 aspects of the serial killings. This analysis revealed a subset of behaviours of many serial killings which match the FBI’s typology for organised offenders.

This suggests that a key component of the FBI typology has some validity.

Counterpoint

Godwin argues that most killers have multiple contrasting characteristics and don’t fit into one ‘type’.
This suggests that the organised-disorganised typology is probably more of a continuum.

AO3: Strength: It can be adapted to other types of crime e.g. burglary

It has been reported that top-down profiling has recently been applied to burglary, leading to an 85% rise in solved cases in 3 US states. The detection method adds two new categories- interpersonal (offender knows their victim, steals something of significance) and opportunistic (inexperienced young offender).

This suggests that top-down profiling has wider application than was originally assumed.

AO3: Limitation: Evidence for top-down profiling was flawed

Canter argues that the FBI agents did not select a random or even large sample, nor did it include different kinds of offender. There was no standard set of questions so each interview was different and therefore not comparable.

This suggests that top-down profiling does not have a sound scientific basis.

AO3: Limitation: Personality

The top-down approach is based on behavioural consistency- that serial offenders have characteristic ways of working, so crime scene characteristics help identification. Mischel argued that people’s behaviour is much more driven by the situation they are in than by their personality.

This suggests that a profiling method based on behavioural consistency may not always lead to successful identification of an offender.