Offender Profiling: The Top-Down Approach Flashcards Preview

AQA Psychology - Forensic Science > Offender Profiling: The Top-Down Approach > Flashcards

Flashcards in Offender Profiling: The Top-Down Approach Deck (25)
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1
Q

What is offender profiling?

A

Behavioural and analytic tool to help investigators accurately predict and profile the characteristics of an unknown criminal

2
Q

When may you use an offender profile?

A

When there is little evidence to suggest who committed the crime

3
Q

Who came up with the top-down approach?

A

The US

4
Q

What are the crime scene and evidence analysed?

A

To generate a hypothesis on probable characteristics of the offender

5
Q

What does the Top-down approach match crime/offender to?

A

Pre-existing template

6
Q

How are murderers or rapists classified?

A

Classified by one of two catergories (Organised or disorganised)

7
Q

Who came up with the crime scene classification (disorganised or organised)?

A

Hazelwood and Douglas (1980)

8
Q

What type approach is the top-down approach qualitative or quantitative?

A

Qualitative approach

9
Q

Why is the top-down approach known as the qualitative approach?

A

Looks at overall picture

10
Q

What types of crime is the top-down approach suitable for?

A

Murder, rape and ritualistic crime

11
Q

What do the types of classification (organised or disorganised) correlate with?

A

Social and psychological characteristics that relate to an individual

12
Q

What are the characteristics of an organised offender?

A
  • Ordered life
  • Planning of crime
  • High degree of control
  • Above-average IQ
  • Usually married and may have children
13
Q

What are the characteristics of a disorganised offernder?

A
  • Commit a crime due to a moment of passion
  • Little evidence of planning
  • Impulsive
  • Below-average IQ
  • History of failed relationships may even live alone
14
Q

What are the four main stages in the construction of a top-down profile?

A

1) Data assimilation
2) Crime scene classification
3) Crime reconstruction
4) Profile generation

15
Q

What is data assimilation?

A

Review of the evidence

16
Q

What is crime scene classification?

A

Organised or disorganised

17
Q

What is crime reconstruction?

A

Generating a hypothesis about behaviour and events

18
Q

What is profile generation?

A

Generating a hypothesis about the offender

19
Q

Why is a limitation that the top-down approach is only relevant to particular crimes?

A

Cannot identify common offences so may actually not or cannot be be used all the time

20
Q

What type of validity does the top-down approach lack in?

A

Temporal validity

21
Q

Why does the top-down approach lack in temporal validity?

A

Out dated models of personalities

22
Q

Is the classification of offenders mutually exclusive?

A

No

23
Q

Why are the classification of offenders not mutually exclusive?

A
  • Too simplestic

- More typologies (Holmes suggests four types of serial killers)

24
Q

How was the classification of offenders produced?

A

Interviews with 36 killers (25 serial killers and 11 single or double murderers)

25
Q

Why is the methodology of the production of classification of offenders a limitation?

A
  • Small sample size
  • Unrepresentative
  • Self-report method (you have to trust criminals)