Tuesday 14 May 2013

Creating a Profile - Bottom-up Approach

The British police take a different approach to offender profiling to the FBI.

  • It's based on psychological theory, rather than police experience. 
  • One key theory is the "criminal consistency hypothesis". This is Canter's theory that criminals act in a consistent manner, and thus the characteristics they displayed in their crime are likely to be similar to how they are in their everyday lives. 
    1. Interpersonal consistency: how the offender treated the victim may be characteristic of their approach to that race/culture/sexual orientation/gender. E.g. rapists may be aggressive to female co-workers.
    2. Spatial consistency: the offender is likely to commit somewhere that they are comfortable in - somewhere they know well. e.g. a murder may be committed en route to a friend's house or their workplace.
  • It's based on patterns and objectivity, so it's often referred to as quantitative. 
  • It's appropriate for a wider range of crimes than the FBI approach, but works best for crimes such as murder and rape.
  • It's called the bottom-up approach because the police look at details and use this to gradually build up the profile, whilst the top-down approach attempts to fit crime scenes under pre-existing categories. 
Study: Copson conducted a study using detectives from 48 police forces in the UK. The study used self-report to gather data on the opinions on and potential for offender profiling. The results showed that a minority of detectives found profiling useful in solving the case, but that a fair number would use profiling again. It was concluded that offender profiling was effective in providing a valuable second opinion or supporting what the detectives thought, and suggested that better education in the theory behind profiling may develop trust in profiles. 

6 comments:

  1. cOULD YOU please do a model answer for the bottom up approach plz

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. This isn't a "model answer" as such because it hasn't been marked, but here's what I would write:

      (a) The bottom up approach to creating an offender profile is used in the United Kingdom. It is called the bottom up approach as it is uses details from the crime scene in order to gradually build up a clearer picture of what characteristics the offender is likely to exhibit, in terms of how they socialise, where they live and work, and what demographic they’re likely to be part of. It’s an important part of making a case as it gives the police a starting point for narrowing down suspects and providing a second opinion. Copson (1995) found that detectives often cited that offender profiling helps to support their suspicions of suspects.

      The bottom up approach is based on psychological theory, as opposed to the top down approach which uses typology based on experience. One particularly prominent theory used when creating an offender profile is Canter’s criminal consistency hypothesis: the idea that people tend to behave consistently, and thus the criminal is likely to behave at the crime scene in a similar way to in their normal life. This theory consists of two parts: interpersonal consistency and spatial consistency. Interpersonal consistency refers to how the criminal acts towards the victim (if there is one). For example, if a female victim was raped and physically abused, it could be that they’ve been in or are currently in an abusive relationship, or that they show no respect to females they come into contact with on a daily basis, such as colleagues or family members. Spatial consistency works on the basis that criminals are likely to commit a crime in a location they feel comfortable – it might be en route to a friend’s house or their workplace, and if it’s in an urban location for example, they may also live in a similar area close by. Thus, as it looks for patterns, this approach is considered to be quantitative.

      Whilst this approach is most commonly used for more severe crimes such as rape and murder, it can be applied to a variety of crimes.

      Delete
  2. if you were to write a 10 mark question on either the British method or FBI method would you go into detail such as Canters five factor model or the four steps of the crime scene analysis? if its a concept based question rather than a study based question would you still put parts of the study in as well? like the conclusion...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Definitely. Of course your focus needs to be exactly what the question asks of you, but I would always include part of the study if it was concept-based, and the rough outline of the concept if the question was study based. This method helps secure your knowledge, and helps you set out the question in such a way that you sound knowledgable. If you're always linking the two in your practice answers, you'll also be more likely to remember in the exam.
      Roughly speaking, I'd say for a concept/method question, you should do mainly the concept or method, and bring in the study to illustrate a point or give evidence at the end. So only about a sentence or two on the study.
      For study questions, have about two or three sentences (depending on the complexity of the concept) on the concept/theory before introducing your study.

      Delete
  3. how would you answer a 15 mark compare and contrast question between both the british and american approach

    ReplyDelete
  4. R.buckler11[[gmail com]] has a remedy for Hsv- 1&2…..

    ReplyDelete