Tuesday 14 May 2013

Creating a Profile - Top down approach

This is potentially one of the more difficult areas to get your head around in G543 forensic psychology. Here's a simplified version that can help you with your 10-markers:


  • The top-down approach is also referred to as "crime scene analysis", "typological profiling"and "the FBI approach".
  • It's American (used by the FBI).
  • It was based on a small number of case studies of offenders, which essentially categorized offenders and crimes into organised or disorganised:
    • Organized crime scenes are generally characterized by no visible evidence or weapon. They're planned in advance, thoughtful and not spontaneous. The body may be hidden, or moved from the original location. It reflects control, and restraints may have been used and brought with them. Organized offenders are thought to be of above average intelligence, socially and sexually competent, may be in a relationship, and was likely to be depressed or frustrated at the time of the murder.
    • Disorganized crime scenes tend to be the result of spontaneous crimes. Little or no effort has been made to remove evidence, and crime scenes show lack of control. Disorganized offenders are likely to live or work nearby the scene, live alone or with parents, be of low birth order status, not be in a stable relationship, and of average or below average IQ.
  • It's described as a qualitative approach to offender profiling due to looking at the overall picture and using typologies. 
  • It's based on police experience and case studies rather than psychological theory.
  • It's suitable for the more extreme/unusual crimes, such as murder, rape and ritualistic crimes. 
N.B. Whilst it was based on case studies of actual offenders, studies have suggested that this may not be a reliable way to create accurate offender profiles. For example, Mokros and Alison used a sample of 100 rapists, and found no correlation between aspects of crime scenes and characteristics of the offender. This suggests that socio-demographic profiling may be too reductionist. 

6 comments:

  1. The top-down approach is referred to as "crime scene analysis". It was based on a small number of case studies of offenders, which essentially categorized offenders and crimes into organised or disorganised: Organized crime scenes are generally characterized by no visible evidence or weapon. They're planned in advance, thoughtful and not spontaneous. Disorganized crime scenes tend to be the result of spontaneous with lack of control.

    One piece of research by Canter el al focuses on top-down typology. He aimed to test the reliability of organised and disorganised typologies. A Psychometric method of using the content analysis was applied to 100 cases to find out if the features hypothesised to belong to each typology would be consistently and distinctively different. The cases were about serial killers in the USA and were cross checked with court reports and officers. The data was collected by an independent researcher. The crime Classification Manual was used to classily the crimes as organised or disorganised. The results show that two as many disorganised as organised crime-scene actions were identified, which shows that disorganised offender are more common and easy to identify.

    is this a good essay?
    please give a model answer to this please
    thanks

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  2. Looks great, but what was the question? Make sure to link back to the question in a concluding sentence. However I'm not aware of the study so I can't vouch for the accuracy but its great in terms of depth and you explain it well.

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  3. Ressler devised the top-down approacch, not Canter.

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  4. Thought that was Hazlewood who based his approach on Ressler's work

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  5. Canter used bottom-up approach.

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