offender profiling: top down approach

What is offender profiling?

It is an investigation tool employed by the police when solving crimes

The main aims is to narrow the list of likely suspects

It will usually involve careful scrutiny of the crime scene and analysis of the other evidence in order to generate hypothesis about the probable characteristics of the offender (eg: age, background)

The American approach

Top down profiling originated in the us as a result of work carried out by the fbi in the 1970s

The fbis behavioural science unit drew upon 36 sexually motivated murderers including ted Bundy and Manson. They concluded data could be categorised into organised or disorganised crimes/ murderers

Offender profilers who use the top down approach will collect data about a murderer and then decide the category the data best fits

Characteristics of a organised offender

• Planned crime

• Have a targeted ‘type’ of victim

• Controlled during crime

• Intelligent

• Little evidence of clues left at crime scene

Characteristics of disorganised offenders

• Little planning and spontaneous

• Impulsive

• Crime scenes clues ( eg: leaving body at crime scene)

• Lower IQ

• Unskilled work

• Unemployed

• Lives close to where the crime took place

Constructing a fbi profile

Four main stages:

1. Data assimilation - the profiler reviews the evidence

2. Crime scene classification - as either organised or disorganised

3. Crime reconstruction- hypotheses in terms of sequence of events behaviour of victim etc

4. Profile generation - hypotheses related to the likely offender eg: demographic background

Research support

P. One strength of the top down approach is that there is support for a distinct organised category of offender

E. David canter et al conducted an analysis of 100 US murderers who each committed by a different serial killer. A technique called smallest space analysis was used - a statistical technique that identify correlation across different samples in behaviour

E. In this case the analysis was used in order to assess the co occurrence of 39 aspects of serial killings. This is includes things such as whether their was torture or restraint for example

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

Types are not mutually exclusive

P. One limitation of top down offender profiling is many studies suggest that the organised and disorganised types are not mutually exclusive

E. These are a variety of combinations that occur at any given murder scene

E. Maurice Godwin argues that in reality it is difficult to classify killers as one or the other type. A killer may have multiple contrasting characteristics such as high intelligence but commits a spontaneous murder.

L. This suggests that the organised disorganised typology is probably more of a continuum

H. Douglas suggested a ‘mixed offender’ to improve this ‘3rd dustbin category’

Wider application

P. One strength of top down profiling is that it can be adapted to the other kinds of crime such as burglary

E. Critics of top down profiling have claimed that the technique only applies to a limited number of crimes such as sexually motivated murderers

E. However meets reports that top down profiling has recently been applied to burglary, leading to 85% rise in solved cases in three us states the detection method added two new categories; interpersonal (offender knows their victim and steals something significant to that person) and opportunistic (generally inexperienced young offenders)

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

Flawed evidence

P. One limitation of top down profiling is the evidence it is based on

E. FBI profiling was developed using interviews with 36 murderers in the US 25 were serial killers the other 11 being single or double murderers at the end 24 individuals were classified as organised and 12 were disorganised

E. Canter et al have argued that the sample was poor - the fbi agents did not select a random or even a large sample nor did the sample include different types of offender. There was no standard set of questions so each interview was different and therefore no really comparable

L. This suggests that top down profiling does not have a sound scientific basis not objective as self report could be inaccurate

H. Rich detailed qualitative data