Summary
Summary Forensic essay plans
- Module
- Forensics psychology
- Institution
- AQA
A* NOTES!!!!! Essay plans crafted from A01 and A03. detailed points to meet in order to gain full marks.
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Discuss bottom-up profiling. (16 marks)Aim – generate image of offender
- Social background, routines, characteristics.
Top-down had fixed stereotypes.
Bottom-down is data driven and grounded in psychology.
1st technique – investigative psychology.
- Apply statistical procedures to analyse evidence to find patterns of behaviour and
develop a statistical database for baseline comparison.
- Match details in database to reveal details.
Interpersonal coherence – behaviour at scene.
Time and place – home and daily routine.
Forensic awareness – any previous investigations.
2nd technique – geographical profiling.
- Location information about linked crime scenes.
- Makes inferences about home/ base.
- Assumption – work in areas they are familiar with.
- Jeopardy surface – educated guess about next location.
Canter’s circle theory.
1. The marauder – operates near home/ base.
2. The commuter – travelled distance from usual residence.
Circle – locations form circle around usual residence.
Railway rapist
- Canter used techniques to find him.
- 24 attacks and 3 murders.
- Correctly identified his; residence, marital status, martial arts, small and
unattractive.
Support for investigative psychology
- Canter and Heritage
- Content analysis, 66 sexual assault cases.
- Analysed using small-space analysis.
- Some characteristics common, impersonal language.
Helps establish links between cases or changes in behaviour.
Support for geographical profiling
- Canter and Lundrigan
- Collated information from 120 serial killers.
- Small space analysis showed spatial consistence.
- Identified location of bodies with the base in centre. ‘Centre of gravity’
supports Canter’s original claim that spatial information is a key factor in determining the base of
an offender
Scientific basis
- More objective and scientific than top-down.
- Can use artificial intelligence to assist in investigation.
- Increasing techniques for suspect interviews for example.
More subjective overall approach.
Mixed rate success
Copson
48 police forces. Information by profilers only 83% useful and only 3% accurate in
identification.
, Discuss top-down profiling. (16 marks)
- Behavioural analytical tool to help investigators predict and profile characteristics of
unknown criminals.
- Collects data and categorises based on police experience and case studies.
- Works down a pre-established typology.
1. organised offender
- Planned crime in advance
- Targeted victim specifically,
- High control and surgical precision.
- Little evidence/ clues left.
- Above average intelligence,
- Skilled/ professional.
- Socially and sexually competent,
- Married with children.
2. Disorganised offender
- Spontaneous – little evidence of planning.
- Little control,
- Clues left and body,
- Low IQ,
- Unskilled/ unemployed,
- Failed relationships, Lives alone and close to scene.
Constructing profile,
1. Data assimilation – review evidence,
2. Crime scene classification – organised or disorganised.
3. Crime reconstruction – hypothesise sequence of events,
4. Profile generation – the likely offender.
Only applies to particular crime
- Ted Budy – a behavioural scientist unit ordered to gather detail from 30+ sexually
motivated killers.
- Profiling may not help solve common crimes.
However Meketa 2017 …
- top down been applied to burglary. 85% rise in solved cases in 3 US states.
- 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 simplistic
- organised and disorganised types are not mutually exclusive.
- A variety of combinations can occur
- Godwin 2002 - 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.
better displayed as a continuum.
Original sample
- 36 were killers, 25 serial killers. 11 single or double murders.
- 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 for organised offenders
- Canter 2004 - statistical technique ‘smallest space analysis’. analysed data from 100 murders
in, USA.
- To find correlations between the how the murders were carried out 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.
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