Offender Profiling: The Top-Down Approach
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What is offender profiling?
Behavioural and analytic tool to help investigators accurately predict and profile the characteristics of an unknown criminal
When may you use an offender profile?
When there is little evidence to suggest who committed the crime
Who came up with the top-down approach?
The US
What are the crime scene and evidence analysed?
To generate a hypothesis on probable characteristics of the offender
What does the Top-down approach match crime/offender to?
Pre-existing template
How are murderers or rapists classified?
Classified by one of two catergories (Organised or disorganised)
Who came up with the crime scene classification (disorganised or organised)?
Hazelwood and Douglas (1980)
What type approach is the top-down approach qualitative or quantitative?
Qualitative approach
Why is the top-down approach known as the qualitative approach?
Looks at overall picture
What types of crime is the top-down approach suitable for?
Murder, rape and ritualistic crime
What do the types of classification (organised or disorganised) correlate with?
Social and psychological characteristics that relate to an individual
What are the characteristics of an organised offender?
• Ordered life • Planning of crime • High degree of control • Above-average IQ • Usually married and may have children
What are the characteristics of a disorganised offernder?
• Commit a crime due to a moment of passion • Little evidence of planning • Impulsive • Below-average IQ • History of failed relationships may even live alone
What are the four main stages in the construction of a top-down profile?
1) Data assimilation 2) Crime scene classification 3) Crime reconstruction 4) Profile generation
What is data assimilation?
Review of the evidence
What is crime scene classification?
Organised or disorganised
What is crime reconstruction?
Generating a hypothesis about behaviour and events
What is profile generation?
Generating a hypothesis about the offender
Why is a limitation that the top-down approach is only relevant to particular crimes?
Cannot identify common offences so may actually not or cannot be be used all the time
What type of validity does the top-down approach lack in?
Temporal validity
Why does the top-down approach lack in temporal validity?
Out dated models of personalities
Is the classification of offenders mutually exclusive?
No
Why are the classification of offenders not mutually exclusive?
• Too simplestic - More typologies (Holmes suggests four types of serial killers)
How was the classification of offenders produced?
Interviews with 36 killers (25 serial killers and 11 single or double murderers)