Offender Profiling

Explain the typology approach to offender profiling

• created by the FBI from in-depth interviews with 36 serial killers

• Includes disorganised and organised typologies

• Investigators comes to crime scene and classifies it to a typology

• Offenders are assigned to categories based on evidence

What are the 4 stages of constructing an FBI profile

1. Data assimilation

2. Crime Scene Classification

3. Crime Reconstruction

4. Profile Generation

Identify the differences between organised and disorganised offenders

• Planning: more or less?

• Victim: targeted or opportunistic?

• Social skills: are they sexually competent / socially awkward?

• Evidence: do they leave lots of clues?

• IQ: high or low?

Explain what Canter’s analysis shows about the use of the typology approach in offender profiling

• analysed 100 USA murder cases

• ‘Organised offenders’ appeared to have distinct features that cluster together

• ‘Disorganised offenders’ didn’t posses a clear category

Explain what Meketa’s analysis of burglars shows about the use of the typology approach in offender profiling

• Organised / Disorganised typologies were applicable (with some modification) to burglars

• Led to an 85% increase in solved cases in the USA

Explain the limitation of the evidence used in the development of the typology approach

• small and unrepresentative sample of killers

• Biased towards serial killers

• No standardisation of questions

• Variable data collection techniques used between offenders

Explain what’s involved in the data-driven approach to offender profiling

• profilers work up from evidence collected from the crime scene to develop a hypothesis

• Establish patterns of behaviour forming a statistical ‘database’

• Offence compared against database

• Interpersonal coherence, significance of time and place, forensic awareness

• Offender’s behaviour at crime scene reflects their everyday behaviour and thus is a clue

Explain what’s involved in geographical profiling as an approach to offender profiling, including Canter’s circle theory

• the location of crimes as a clue

• Crime mapping based on psychological theories of offender’s behaviour in relation to their home base

• Canter’s circle theory

  • Marauders operate close to home

  • Commuters operate further afield

Explain what Canter & Heritage’s analysis showed about the data-driven approach

• smallest space analysis established patterns of behaviour across sexual assault cases e.g. interpersonal coherence

Explain what Lundrigan & Canter’s analysis showed about the geographical profiling approach to offender profiling

• smallest space analysis established geographical ‘centre of gravity’ as offenders spread victims in a circle around their home/base

Explain what Copson’s survey suggests about the usefulness of offender profiling in general

• surveyed 48 police departments

• Advice from profilers was ‘useful’ in 83% of cases

• Advice from profilers only led to identifying the offender in 3% of cases