profiling

Offender profiling is concerned with narrowing down suspects and identifying likely characteristics and habits, not naming a single person:

• Top-down approach — general classification of crime scene to narrow down and make judgements about potential offender

  • Commonly used in USA

• Bottom-up approach — data is collected from the crime scene but analysed using statistical techniques to generate predictions

  • Commonly used in UK

top-down/typological profiling

• Making what is known about offender to fit a pre-existing template: occupation, education, age, IQ etc.

  • Classify crime scenes as organised or disorganised

  • Based on interviews with 36 convicted serial killers and rapists, and many crimes investigated and solved by FBI

• A typology is a classification system, typological profiling aims to classify offenders into different types based upon behaviours at crime scene, this is called crime scene analysis

  • Identifying type of offender and characteristics e.g personality, lifestyle

  • Profiler gathers all evidence they can about crime scene, victim and forensic evidence and split them into the 2 types

Steps of top-down profiling:

1. Data assimilation — review evidence

2. Crime scene classification — organised or disorganised

3. Crime reconstruction — hypothesis sequence of events and behaviour

4. Profile generation — hypothesise offender characteristics (demographics, physical characteristics, behaviour)

evaluations

• Common offences like burglary reveal little about the criminal so wouldn’t work with this, limited practical application

• Based on interviews with 36 of the most dangerous murders like Ted Bundy, this makes approach dubious because highly manipulative individuals are not a reliable source of information. Social desirability and small sample

• Simplistic, some criminals might fit both categories

• Unscientific, can be inaccurate

bottom-up approach profiling

• Created by Canter, development from American BSU approach

• Start with evidence, no classification in mind — investigative psychology — and compare with other cries in database to scrutinise details

• Geographical profiling — where/what it shows, ‘type’ of place e.g alley, public and also physically e.g Birmingham

• Design a profile for the crime rather than using existing to fit it into

Canter and Gregory:

• Circle theory — majority of the time, if a circle is drawn encompassing a series of linked crimes, offender will be based somewhere inside

• The commuter:

  • Travel away from home area to offend in another

  • Location of offences in new area tend to be clustered

  • E.g main road or station would suggest means of transport and route

• The marauder:

  • Home range that they travel within

  • Move outside home in different directs to avoid detection

  • Circle drawn through locations of 2 further apart, home will be somewhere in the centre

Case studies:

• Canter created accurate profile of the railway rapist John Duffy. Lived in London, married w/ no children but separated, was small (5’4) and physically unattractive

• Britton created a profile on Rachel Nickell crime. Collin Stag was identified as a suspect, ‘honey trap’ used undercover female officers to get him to confess, there was no actual evidence he had done it. Real criminal was Robert Napper, identified using DNA, he was suspected but ruled out for being too tall compared to Britton’s profile

Investigative psychology — associated with Canter’s ideas in geographical profiling new features:

• The offender consistency principle

  • Offender’s behaviour is consistent between and non-offending behaviour. The way they commit crimes will reflect their everyday behaviour/personality

  • E.g rapist uses degrading language —> man who sees women as objects

• Criminal narrative themes

  • Criminals base offending on ‘offending narratives themes’ or personal life stories that give their crimes meaning

  • ‘Elated hero’, ‘depressed victim’, ‘calm professional’, ‘distressed revenger’

  • E.g elated hero —> brave, enjoyable, exciting adventure. Depressed victim —> life is beyond their control, no other choice but to offend, confused, lonely and depressed

Bottom-up research:

• Canter + Heritage — 66 UK sexual assaults statistically analysed, significant evidence that investigative psychology such as crime scene evidence could reveal key traits of offenders

• Lundrigan + Canter — 120 murder cases → spatial consistency: location of body in a different direction from previous site = offender base

• Copson — mixed results, 48 police forces surveyed. Advice from profilers useful in 83% of cases but lead to accurate identification in 3%

overview evaluations