Offender Profiling

Question 1

Offender profiling

Answer 1

Used to narrow down lists of suspects for crimes, based on deducing characteristics of an offender from offence details and crime scene
Scrutiny of crime scene, analyse evidence and witness reports then hypothesise likely characteristics of offender(s)

Question 2

Top down approach

Answer 2

Evidence used to sort an offender into one of two categories
Organised - planning in advance with a targeted victim (usually of a certain type e.g women), high control during crime with little evidence left behind. Offenders above average intelligence with good job, socially competent and likely married w children
Disorganised - opposite of organised, unplanned, spontaneous, low control, unintelligent, live alone and likely close to place of offence
Then can narrow down possible suspects following this

Question 3

Top down approach eval

Answer 3

• Only really useful for serious cases like murder as specific personal details revealed, not as much for common crimes like robbery
• based on 36 interviews with usa serial killers, small and unrepresentative sample
  and invalid to rely on self report data from convicted killers (e.g ted bundy)
• overly simplistic - Holmes suggests 4 types of serial killers - hedonistic (for thrill), visionary (god/devil led), power (for control) and mission (to eradicate a certain group/type of people)
• Canter analysed 100 murders in USA - found strong evidence for organised type but not for disorganised, perhaps too vague/ wide a category

Question 4

Bottom up approach

Answer 4

uses data from different crimes to build statistical databases used to find patterns and relationships
also uses investigative psychology and geographical profiling

Question 5

Investigative psychology

Answer 5

Assumes interpersonal coherence e.g behaviour during the crime is similar to behaviour in real life - so can inform on general behaviour
Significance of time and place - may indicate where offender is based/travels/preferences
Forensic awareness i.e those who cover their tracks more like hiding DNA/body/weapon likely have had police trouble before or the police has their DNA on file

Question 6

Bottom up approach eval

Answer 6

+ more objective and scientific as relies on data and facts, not intuition
+ applicable to much wider range of crimes like burglary and theft not just murder and rape
- requires databases to be accurate and maintained
- chem students produced more accurate offender profiles than senior detectives so perhaps the approach is just common sense and guesswork
- significant failures occur, one women stabbed x47 in 1992 and the real killer was ruled out because he was taller than the system predicted, so many more victims died before he was caught

Question 7

Geographical profiling

Answer 7

Studies location to clue to offenders life,jobs,habit and analyse transport and crime stats
1- Least effort - travels no further than needed to get away - usually local ish
2 - Distance decay - commits more crime closer to home than away, and proximity increases with time (and confidence)
3 - centre of gravity - based around min distance to each location - will usually form a circle where the offender lives in the middle
Offenders are either marauders (crimes close to home forming a circle) or commuter (travels to a familiar place away to commit crime)

Question 8

Geographical profiling eval

Answer 8

+ 120 serial killer us cases studied, location of body disposal sites plotted and offenders base was close to centre of gravity of sites - esp for marauders
+ one success in railway rapist case where station locations plotted and helped find location - as a marauder
- likely more useful for marauders because the circle drawn will acc be where they live
- not useful for financial or passion crimes etc where the crime committed is not linked to a specific location