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Summary Forensic lesson notes
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Forensic Psychology.4.3.9 Forensic Psychology
Offender profiling: the top-down approach, including organised and disorganised types
of offender; the bottom-up approach, including investigative Psychology; geographical
profiling.
Biological explanations of offending behaviour: an historical approach (atavistic form);
genetics and neural explanations.
Psychological explanations of offending behaviour: Eysenck’s theory of the criminal
personality; cognitive explanations; level of moral reasoning and cognitive
distortions, including hostile attribution bias and minimalisation; differential
association theory; psychodynamic explanations.
Dealing with offending behaviour: the aims of custodial sentencing and the
psychological effects of custodial sentencing. Recidivism. Behaviour modification in
custody. Anger management and restorative justice programmes.
- Offender profiling: the top-down approach, including organised and disorganised types
of offenders; the bottom-up approach, including investigative Psychology; geographical
profiling.
- Psychological explanations of offending behaviour: Eysenck’s theory of the criminal
personality; cognitive explanations; level of moral reasoning and cognitive distortions,
including hostile attribution bias and minimalization; differential association theory;
psychodynamic explanations.
- Essay?
,Offender profiling – the top-down approach: RC
A behavioural and analytical tool that is intended to help investigators accurately predict
and profile the characteristics of unknown criminals.
- Can narrow the field of enquiry and list of suspects.
- There are various methods.
Ted Bundy - Most notorious serial killer in the USA during the 1970s.
- He confessed to 30 homicides, but the true victim count remains unknow
and believed to be much higher – around 100?
The Aka; the top-down-approach or the Typology approach.
American Collect data and then decode which category that data best fits in, based on
approach police experience and case studies rather than psychological theory.
- Profilers start with a pre-established typology and work down to assign
offenders to one of two categories based on witness accounts and evidence
from the crime scene.
- Ted Bundy led to the development of the work by the Behavioural Science
Unit where they drew upon data gathered from in-depth interviews with 36
sexually motivated serial killers, including Ted Bundy and `Charles Manson.
- Concluded that the data could be categorised into two categories –
organised or disorganised crime/ murders.
- Each had certain characteristics.
- This meant that in the future, if the data from that crime scene matched
some of the characteristics in one category, we could predict other likely
characteristics of the offender.
- Profilers who use this will access the crime scene and match it to a pre-
existing template that the FBI developed.
- They believe murders and rapists are classified and this classification will
inform the subsequent investigation.
Organised - Based on the idea that serious offenders have signature ways of working
and and these correlate with a particular set of social and psychological
disorganis characteristics that relate to the individual.
ed types
of Organised offenders
offender. - Show evidence of having planned the crime in advance. Victim deliberately
targeted and will reflect the ‘type’ of the offender.
- Maintain high degree of control and operate detached surgical precision.
- Little evidence or clues left behind.
- Tend to be above average intelligence, in a skilled, professional occupation
and are socially and sexually competent.
- Usually married and often have children.
Disorganised offenders
- Show little evidence of planning, suggesting that the offence may be
spontaneous.
- Crime scene tends to reflect the impulsive nature of the attach; body still at
scene.
- Tend to have little control on the part of the offender.
- Tend to have a lower-than-average IQ, unskilled work or unemployed,
history of sexual dysfunction and failed relationships.
- Tend to live alone and relatively close to where the offence took place.
Constructi - There are 4 main stages in the construction of an FBI profile;
ng the FBI 1. Data assimilation – the profiler reviews the evidence (crime scene
profile photographs, pathology, reports.)
2. Crime scene classification – as either organised or disorganised.
3. Crime reconstruction – hypothesis in terms of sequence of events,
behaviour of the victim etc.
4. Profile generation – hypothesis relates to the likely offender e.g.,
demographic background, physical characteristics, behaviour etc.
, Evaluation
Only - Was crafted after interviewing murders and rapists and therefore may only
applies to be helpful for catching offenders of those crimes.
particular - More common crimes such as burglary and destruction of property may not
crime lend themselves to profiling as the crime scene may reveal very little about
the offender.
- Weakens the top-down-approach as it is limited in offender profiling for own
crimes.
However Meketa 2017 …
- Reports that top down has recently been applied to burglary. Leading to an
85% rise in solved cases in 3 US states.
- It has been adapted to include two new categories
1. Interpersonal, offender knows who they are stealing from,
2. Opportunistic, inexperienced young offender.
- Early study and only 3 states but suggests that top down can be adapted
and made useful for more crimes than first thought.
Too - Behaviours that describe each of the organised and disorganised types are
simplistic not mutually exclusive.
- A variety of combinations can occur at any crime scene.
- Godwin 2002 argues that in reality it’s difficult to classify someone as
organised or disorganised. A killer might be highly intelligent, but commit a
spontaneous murder, leaving the body at the scene.
- Critics argue the categories are better displayed as a continuum.
Original - 36 were killers, 25 serial killers. 11 single or double murders.
sample - Too small and unrepresentative to base a typology system on that has
significant influence on the nature of the police investigations.
- Self-repot data unreliable, psychopaths, lying.
- Not structured interview, different and unable to compare them.
Evidence - Canter 2004 used a statistical technique called ‘smallest space analysis’
for and analysed data from 100 murders in the USA.
organised - Looking to find correlations between the how the murders were carried out
offenders and the traits of who did them.
- Each case was examined with reference to 39 characteristics thought to be
typical of organised and disorganised killers.
- He found significant evidence that there did seem to be an organised
offended type.
- However there was no real evidence for a disorganised type.
- Americans have got it half right and the template for an organised offender
is correct and should be used.
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