offender profiling - top down app

What’s offender profiling

• also known as criminal profiling

• Practise of inferring traits of a criminal from the details of their crime and crime itself

• Profiling methods can offer but building a profile typically involves a deep examination of the crime scene and evidence to generate educated guesses about the offenders likely characteristics: age, background etc

The two main approaches to offender profiling

• top down approach: profilers start with a pre established typology and work down to assign offenders to 1 of 2 categories

• Bottom up approach: profilers work up from evidence collected to develop a hypothesis about likely characteristics and backgrounds

Constructing an FBI profile - 4 parts of the process

1 data assimilation - the profiler reviews the evidence like crime scene photos, reports etc

2 crime scene classification - crime scene classified as either organised or disorganised and makes this conclusion first then finds the evidence

3 crime reconstruction - hypotheses in terms of the sequence of events, behaviour of the victim etc

4 profile regeneration - hypothesis related to the likely offender such as demographic, physical characteristics etc

Organised and disorganised offender characteristics

• in the crime classification stage

• Disorganised: planned and controlled approach and may be done over time, weapons may be brought to scene, evidence is destroyed or removed (anything that links to them), attempts to control victims, offenders are unknown to victims: socially and sexually competent, normal to high intelligence and angry / depressed

• Organised: unplanned and chaotic approach, improvised weapons, evidence that links to them is left at the scene, little attempt at control over victims, offenders possibly known to victims: socially and sexually inept, low intelligence, anxious / psychotic

Ao3 - canter et al - supporting research for the organised offender but not for the disorganised

• canter et al: assessed 100 murders by 100 serial killers in the US for the presence of 38 characteristics identified as typical of either organised or disorganised offenders using the smallest space analysis technique.

• A subset of organised characteristics was found to be typical of most serial killers such as body left in an isolated spot.

• But disorganised characteristics didn’t occur in a pattern that would allow the researcher to identify a type of killer

• Adds credibility to the idea of an organised offender, but not diagnosed , suggests top down profiling lacks usefulness

Ao3 - generalisability with original research sample when FBI created top down app

• the typology app was developed using interviews w 36 killers in the US

• 25 of which were serial killers, other 11 being single / double murderers

• Critics have pointed out this is too small / unrepresentative a sample upon which to base a typology system that may have a significant influence on police investigation

• Canter also argued its not sensible to rely on self report data w convicted killers when constructing a classification system

• Reduces credibility of top down suggesting bottom up is a better option

Ao3 - theoretical flaw of top down is that some research has suggested the organised and disorganised types aren’t mutually exclusive

• are a variety of combinations that occur at any given murder scene

• E.g Godwin argues in reality its difficult to classify killers as one or the other type , a killer may have multiple contrasting characteristics like high intelligence and sexual competence but commits a spontaneous murder leaving evidence at the scene i.e the body

• Suggests they organised / disorganised typology is probably more of a continuum and the original theory lacks explanatory power

• E.g Ted Bundy - got caught in a stolen car twice

Ao3 - strength of top down = can be adapted to other crimes like burglary

• critics have claimed the technique only applies to a no of limited crimes like sexually motivated murder - top down

• However Meketa reports that top down has recently been applied to a burglary leading to a 85% rise in solved cases in 3 US states

• The method involves the organised / disorganised distinction but also adds 2 new categories: interpersonal (offender usually knows their victim and steals something of significance) and also opportunities (generally inexperienced young offender)

• Suggests that top down has wider application than was originally assumed