Forensics Evaluations

Top Down Approach - Ressler, clear distinction between organised and disorganised

positive - based 2 definitions on real serial offenders, 24/12 split suggesting clear distinction

negative - restricted sample of 36 sex offenders, maybe can’t generalise to wider population

Top Down Approach - difficulty to separate offenders

some criminals may have organised and disorganised traits

Top Down Approach - only applies to certain crimes

only applies to crimes that reveal info about suspect, burglary wouldn’t fit in for example

Bottom-Up Approach - Carter & Larkin, support for circle hypothesis

82% of british sexual assaulters were marauders, supports circle hypothesis

Bottom-Up Approach - Difficult to know if offender is marauder or commuter before being apprehended

Bottom-Up Approach - you need to be able to distinguish between criminals

It can be hard to distinguish offences by separate offenders

Bottom-Up Approach - more scientific

as it makes inferences based of statistical analysis, better than top down approach

Historical Approach - Lombroso’s Method

he used careful measurements which paved the way for for scientific approaches

Historical Approach - Biological determinism

could remove responsibility of criminal actions

Historical Approach - Goring

compared measurements of 3000 criminals and 3000 non-criminals, found no physical differences

Historical Approach - Scientific Racism

claims features such as dark skin identify criminality, has lead to racist policies which have harmed black communities

Genetics/Neural Explanations - Christiansen

studied 87 mz and 147 dz twins, 33% concordance rate for mz, 12% for dz, shows offending has genetic component but also has environmental factors