THE TOP-DOWN APPROACH

→ Offender Profiling is the idea that characteristics of an offender can be deduced from the characteristics of the offence

→ It’s an investigative tool used by police to solve crimes

→ The aim is to narrow down the list of suspects

~Top Down Approach~

→ Approach emerged in the 1970’s as a result of work carried out by the FBI

→ FBI interviewed 36 sexually motivated serial killers, including Ted Bundy and Richard Chase

→ From these interviews, it was concluded that the crimes could be categorised into either organised or disorganised

→ Profilers gather data and then assign to a category, this is known as a typology approach

~Organised Offenders~

  • Crime planned

  • Victim targeted

  • Crime scene orderly

  • Evidence cleaned up

  • High intelligence

  • Socially competent

  • Sexually competent

  • Skilled occupation

  • Monitors media coverage of crimes

  • High birth order (oldest sibling)

  • Inconsistent discipline as a child

  • e.g. Ted Bundy

~Disorganised Offenders~

  • Crime unplanned

  • Victim selected at random

  • Unordered crime scene

  • Evidence left behind

  • Average intelligence

  • Socially immature

  • Sexually incompetent

  • Lives alone

  • No interest in media coverage of crimes

  • Low broth order (youngest sibling)

  • Harsh discipline as a child

  • e.g. Richard Chase

~Constructing an FBI Profile~

  1. Data Assimilation - profiler reviews the evidence (crime scene photos, witness reports, etc)

  2. Crime scene classification - as either organised or disorganised

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

  4. Profile Generation- hypotheses related to the likely offender (e.g. physical characteristics, behaviour, etc)

EVALUATION

Research Support

→ RESEARCH SUPPORT

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

  • In order to test the organised-disorganised typology which is central to the top-down approach, David Canter et al (2004) conducted an analysis of 100 US murders each commuter by a different serial killer.

  • A technique called smallest space analysis was used - a statistical technique that identifies correlations across different samples of behaviour.

  • In this case, the analysis was used in order to assess the co-concurrence of 39 aspects of serial killings. This included such things as whether there was torture or restraint, whether there was an attempt to conceal the body, the form of murder weapon used, and the cause of death.

  • This analysis revealed that there does seem to be a subset of features of many serial killings which match the FBI’s typology for organised offenders. This suggests that a key component of the FBI typology approach has some validity.

  • However, many studies suggest that the organised and disorganised types are not mutually exclusive.

  • There are a variety of combinations that occur at any given murder scene. For instance, Maurice Godwin (2002) argues that, in reality, it is difficult to classify killers as one or the other type.

  • A killer may have multiple constraining characteristics, such as high intelligence and social competence, but commits a spontaneous murder leaving the victim’s body at the crime scene.

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

    → WIDER APPLICATION

  • Another strength of top-down profiling is that it can be adapted to other kinds of crime, such as burglary.

  • Critics of top-down profiling have claimed that the technique only applies to a limited number of crimes, such as sexually-motivated murder. However, Tina Meketa (2017) reports that top-down profiling has recently been applied to burglary, leading to an 85% rise in solved cases in 3 US states.

  • This detection methods retains the organised-disorganised distinction but also adds two new categories: interpersonal (offender usually knows their victim and steals something of significance) and opportunistic (generally inexperienced young offender).

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

    Conflicting Evidence

    → FLAWED EVIDENCE

  • One limitation of top-down profiling is the evidence on which it is based.

  • As we have seen, FBI profiling was developed using interviews with 36 murderers in the US - 25 of which were serial killers, the other 11 being single or double murderers. At the end of the process, 24 of these individuals were classified as organised offenders and 12 were disorganised.

  • Canter et al have argued that the sample was poor - The FBI agents did not select a random or even standard set of questions so each interview was different and therefore not really comparable.

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