Offender Profiling:
● Offender profiling is a behavioural and analytic tool that is intended to help investigators
accurately predict and profile the characteristics of unknown criminals
● Disorganised type of offender: crime scenes are left with many clues such as fingerprints,
there is little evidence of engagement with the victim:
○ Below average intelligence
○ Socially incompetent
○ Unskilled or unemployed
○ Minimal use of restraints/leaves body on display
○ Victim is known to the offender and is often spontaneous
● Organised type of offender: commits a planned crime and may engage in violent fantasies
with the victim:
○ Average to high intelligence
○ Socially competent
○ Plans offences
○ Uses restraints on victims
○ Targeted stranger as a victim
● Offender profiling began with the FBI in the USA when the Behavioural Science Unit began
researching family backgrounds, personalities, crimes, and motives of serial killers in the
1970s
○ They interviewed 37 imprisoned serial killers (including Charles Manson and Ted
Bundy)
○ From the insights they gained and a thorough analysis of the crime details, combined
with the intuition of experienced police, they created a classification system for
various crimes
● The top-down approach: 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
■ Qualitative profile created from interview and analysis of crime
details/scenes → top: motives and characteristics of offenders → down:
categories creating more knowledge of the crime → classification system is
used to predict and prevent crime
● Stages to the top-down process:
○ 1) data assimilation (review evidence)
○ 2) crime scene classification (organised or unorganised)
○ 3) crime reconstruction (hypothetical series of events constructed)
○ 4) profile generation (hypothesis related to the killer; looks, education…)
○ OR profiling inputs → decision process models → crime assessment → criminal
profile → crime assessment → apprehension
● Evaluation of the top-down approach:
,●
○ - It is reductionist, as the classification system is too simple
■ Offenders are not simply either disorganised or organised → it may be that
there are both features in all their crimes
○ - Alison et al. (2002) argued that this approach is based on outdated theories of
personality being stable
■ External, situational factors can be a major influence on offending, and they
are constantly changing
○ - It is subjective
■ Less scientific than the bottom-up method as it relies on expert hunches and
intuition
○ + Has the ability to quickly narrow down a list of suspects based on their
characteristics and behaviour
■ Also has potential to predict future criminal behaviour
● The bottom-up approach: the aim is to generate a picture of the offender (characteristics,
routine behaviour, social background etc.) through analysis of the crime scene
○ Unlike top-down approach, it does not begin with fixed typologies
○ Includes investigative psychology and geographical profiling
● Geographical profiling uses information to do with the location of linked crime scenes to
make inferences about the likely home or operational base of an offender → known as crime
mapping
○ It can also be used in conjunction with psychological theory (such as that informed
by investigative psychology) to create hypotheses about the offender
○ The assumption is that serial offenders will restrict their ‘work’ to areas they are
familiar with, so understanding the spatial pattern of their behaviour provides
investigators with a centre of gravity which is likely to include the offender’s base
(often in the middle of the spatial pattern)
● Canter’s circle theory proposed two models of offender behaviour:
○ The marauder
■ Who operates in close proximity to their home base
○ The commuter
■ Who is likely to have travelled to commit the crime (but is still likely to be
somewhere familiar to them)
○ Crucially though, the pattern of offending is likely to form a circle around their usual
residence, and this becomes more apparent the more offences there are
■ This can offer the investigative team important insight into the nature of the
offence and characteristics of the offender
● Evaluation of the bottom-up approach:
○ - Other factors are important
■ Location is important but there are other factors that need to be taken into
account, such as their psychological characteristics
■ Concentrating on location may cause an investigator to miss important
information if used in isolation
○ + There is evidence to support geographical profiling
, ■ Lundrigan and Canter (2001) collated information from 120 murder cases
involving serial killers in the USA
■ Analysis revealed spatial consistency in the behaviour of the offenders
● The effect was more noticeable for offenders who travelled short
distances (marauders)
■ This supports Canter’s claim that spatial information is a key factor in
determining the base of an offender
○ + The approach works for different crimes
■ Geographical profiling helps to locate offenders of many different types of
crime
● E.g. it can be used to locate the likely home of burglars given that
they concentrate their crimes in a familiar place, often close to home
○ + It is based on research and statistical likelihood
■ This means that it is seen to be more scientific than top-down approaches
■ This use of statistics and theory has removed intuition of the profiler from
the process, which is argued to make it more reliable
○ - There are mixed results for profiling
■ Copson (1995) surveyed 48 police forces and found the advice provided by
the profiler was useful in 83% of cases, but in only 3% did it lead to accurate
identification of the offender
■ Kocsis (2002) - chemistry students produced a more accurate profile on a
solved murder case than experienced professionals
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