What is the Top-Down approach?
An American approach to offender profiling which works its way from the data of the scene to make a profile of the offender
Who proposed the top-down approach and how?
FBI’s behavioural unit gathered data from 36 in-depth interviews from sexually motivated male killers and found two typologies of offenders: organised and disorganised
What is the process of constructing an FBI profile in the top-down approach?
- Data assimilation from the crime scene etc
- Classification into either organised or disorganised
- Crime reconstruction is the hypothesis of order of events etc
- Profile generation is linking the hypothesis to the possible profile
What is offender profiling?
A behavioural & analytical tool which outlines the type of individual likely to have committed the crime
methods of examination: crime scene examination, probable characteristics
What is a strength of the top down approach?
+ Real life application for common behaviours to murder sense and classification, helps identify common groups & prosecute them
+ Qualitative data from in depth interviews, gained deep insight for reasons of offending
What are weaknesses of the research into the top down approach?
- Bias bc based on androcentric, culture bias, limited research (sexually motivated)
- Reductionist bc groups criminals into 2, x account for those in both e.g. TB = more complex
C: Canter analysed 100 murders to 39 characteristics and found characteristics associated w disorganised
