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These are essay plans for Forensic Psychology for AQA Psychology Paper 3
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Top-down Approach:A01:
1) The main aim of offender profiling is to narrow the list of likely
suspects; they do this by analysing the scene and other evidence
to generate hypotheses about the probable characteristics of the
offender e.g. age, background…
2) The FBI interviewed 36 sexually-motivated murderers and used
this data together with characteristics of their crimes to create 2
catergories - organised and disorganised offenders.
3) This distinction is based on the idea that offenders have certain
signature ‘ways of working’ which correlate with social and
psychological characteristics of the individual.
4) Organised Offenders: evidence of planning the crime i.e. type of
victim, high degree of control during crime with little evidence,
above average ID, usually married and may have children.
5) Disorganised Offenders: little evidence of planning, crime scene
reflects the impulsive nature of the act, below average IQ, sexual
dysfunction.
6) FBI Profile Construction: data assimilation (review of
evidence), crime scene classification, crime reconstruction, profile
generation.
AO3:
(Strength)
- Research support for an organised category.
- Canter et al (2004) looked at 100 US serial killers where the
smallest space analysis was used to assess the co-occurrence of
39 aspects of the serial killings.
- This analysis revealed a subset of behaviours of many serial
killings which match the FBI’s typology for organised offenders.
- This supports that a key component of the FBI topology approach
has some validity.
(Weakness)
- However, many studies suggest that the organised and
disorganised types are not mutually exclusive.
- Godwin (2002) argues that, in reality, most killers have multiple
contrasting characteristics that don’t fit into one ‘type’.
- This means it is difficult to classify killers as one or the other type.
, - This suggests that the organised-disorganised typology is
probably more of a continuum.
(Strength)
- It can be adapted to other types of crimes e.g. burglary.
- Neketa(2017) reports that the top-down approach has recently
been applied to burglary, leading to an 85% rise in solved cases.
- The detection method adds two new categories - interpersonal
(knows victim) and opportunistic (young offenders).
- This suggests that top-down profiling has wider application than
was originally assumed.
(Weakness)
- Evidence for top-down profiling was flawed.
- Canter et al (2004) argues that the FBI agents did not select a
random or even a large sample when assessing typology.
- There was no standard set of questions so each interview was
different and therefore not comparable.
- This suggests that top-down profiling does not have a scientific
basis, which reduces the validity of the approach.
(Weakness)
- The top-down approach is based on behavioural consistency - that
serial killers have a characteristic way of working.
- It should therefore be possible for profiles to link crime scenes
together, making the offender easier to catch.
- However, Mischel(1968) argued that people’s behaviour is much
more driven by the situation than by personality.
- This suggests that a profiling method based on behavioural
consistency may not always lead to successful identification.
Bottom-Up Approach:
A01:
1) A British profile is not restricted to fixed typologies - instead the
profile is ‘data-driven’ which emerges from rigorously scrutinising
particular offences; the aim is to generate a picture of the
offenders’ characteristics, routines etc by analysing evidence.
2) Statistical procedures detect patterns of behaviour that are likely
to occur across crime scenes; this is done to develop a statistical
‘database’ which acts as a baseline for comparison (features of
offences are compared to database).
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