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Offender profiling
AQA A-level psychology forensic psychology year 13
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Offending behaviour | Actions or conduct which violate established laws, rules, or social norms. Often associated with antisocial or criminal behaviour |
| Profiling | Qualitative characteristics of an individual’s behaviour, cognitive processes, & other psychology characteristics. Commonly based on crime scene evidence & witness accounts to identify a culprit |
| Organised offenders: crime scene | Little forensic evidence, body & weapon in different places, crime is premeditated & well planned with a specific victim & weapon in mind, shows signs of violent or sexual fantasies |
| Organised offenders: personal life | Above average intelligence, socially & professionally successful, usually live with a partner, car in good working order, follows their crimes on the media |
| Disorganised offenders: crime scene | Lots of forensic evidence, opportunistic murder weapon found near body, impulsive & not well planned |
| Disorganised offenders: personal life | Not particularly intelligent, little social or professional success, usually described as a loner, unlikely to engage with the crime after it’s committed |
| Issues with the top-down approach | Requires specific expertise of the detective to rely on their personal subjective opinion. However, because it relies too heavily on guesswork and intuition rather than science it's a pseudoscience |
| FBI Top-down sex offender investigation (1970s) | Interviewed 36 sexually motivated killers such as Ted Bundy & Charles Manson and created a profile on them using the top-down approach and found a lot of common characteristics |
| Top-down approach | processing information using higher level cognitive processes such as expectations, belief, & prior knowledge |
| 1st stage of Top-Down profiling | Data assimilation - hypothesise a sequence of events |
| 2nd stage of Top-Down profiling | Crime scene classification - whether it's organised or disorganised |
| 3rd stage of Top-Down profiling | Crime scene reconstruction - profiler reviews all evidence |
| 4th stage of Top-Down profiling | Profile generation - hypothesise likely offender based on all the evidence |
| Bottom-up approach | Processing information using basic elements & working up to a more complex understanding. Developed by David Canter to make profiling an "empirically based science" more grounded in psychological theory |
| David Canter solves a murder | late 70s to 90s, women 15-32 years were sexually assaulted at railway stations. Canter built a profile for the killer using details from the evening standard such as physical characteristics, occupation, character, sexual activity, and criminal record |
| Investigative psychology | Use of statistics to build a profile of likely offender, based on certain characteristics from the crime & crime scene |
| Geographical profiling | Use of data to determine likely home, base, or place of work of offender |
| Investigative psychology: Interpersonal coherence | People are often consistent so psychologists look for parallels between their crimes & lives. i.e., an aggressive crime will likely be perpetrated by an aggressive person with similar past convictions |
| Investigative psychology: Forensic awareness | Extent to which criminal is aware of forensic science. More experienced burglars will be better at not leaving forensic evidence, but this can demonstrate some of their past crimes |
| Davies et al. (1997): Forensic awareness | Analysis of 210 serious sexual assaults. If offender didn't leave fingerprints, stole from victim, forced entry into building, & drank alcohol, more than 90% probability they had prior burglary convictions |
| Geographical profiling: Circle theory | Offenders commit offences in distinct radii around specific places. For marauder offenders it's their home & for commuter offenders it's a place that's familiar to them |
| Canter & Larkin (1993): Circle theory | Found that most offenders carry out their crimes in a specific radius but that radius differs |
| Geographical profiling: Criminal Geographical Targeting (CGT) | More technologically advanced version of circle. Rather than showing 1 circle, shows a heat map of factors like the time the crime took place & movement of criminal. Also known as a jeopardy surface or probability map |
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