Offender profiling: the Top-Down (Typology) Approach - Forensic Psychology

The top-down (typology) approach

The top-down approach began in the USA in the 1970’s and is most commonly used by the FBI.

There are 4 main stages in the construction of an FBI profile:

Stage one - DATA ASSIMILATION: involves collecting as much data as possible related to the crime (eg. autopsy reports, photos, witness statements ect.)
Stage two – CRIME SCENE CLASSIFICATION: organised or disorganised offender?
Stage three – CRIME RECONSTRUCTION: hypothesis is formed, in terms of the crime sequence and the victims’ behaviour
Stage four – PROFILE GENERATION: hypothesis including details of the offender (eg. their age/sex/race/occupation/family background ect.)

Organised VS Disorganised offenders:
In terms of the crime scene – ‘organised’ offenders remove the weapon from the scene, their victim is a stranger, the crime has been planned and the body is hidden.
In terms of their likely personality – ‘organised’ offenders have an average-to-high IQ, they are sexually and socially competent and they have skilled employment.

‘Disorganised’ offenders are the opposite – no planning, the victim is known, they have a lower-than-average IQ, they are sexually and socially inadequate ect.

Canter et al (2004) used evidence from 100 murders by 100 serial killers in the USA and found that ‘organised’ characteristics were typical of most serial killers – and ‘disorganised’ characteristics were much rarer. This led to the conclusion that being ‘organised’ is just a core characteristic of serial killers as a whole.

Canter et al's (2004) study can be used to demonstrate a weakness of the top-down approach as it illustrates little evidence for the distinction between 2 types of offenders and therefore suggests that the approach is lacking validity.

Additionally, having just 2 main categories of offenders is very simplistic and it is incredibly likely that most criminals don’t fit into either category completely and this therefore makes the prediction of their characteristics difficult – as it’s likely that there are more ‘types’ of criminals which this approach doesn’t recognise.
However, Douglas (1992) has suggested a 3^rd category of offenders: ‘mixed’ offenders. This is for all those who cannot easily be categorised as organised/disorganised – demonstrating that more recognition is being given to the fact that there is likely to be more forms of criminals, thus increasing the accuracy of such approach.

A further weakness is that the basis of this method may be flawed – the distinction between organised vs disorganised offenders was based on interviews conducted with a very limited sample of 36 serial sex offenders and therefore it is likely that it is not generalisable to all criminals.
To further this, the criminals used (such as Ted Bundy and Charles Manson) were high intelligent manipulators – it’s likely that they may have manipulated/’fed lies’ to the interviewer and thus, the whole approach may be based on lies. Therefore, the credibility of such approach must be questioned.

Despite such weaknesses, there are strengths to this approach too: it helps to minimise the search down, which is extremely helpful and important in very populated areas as it can help narrow down the search to only people who fit the description and therefore, it is a more cost-effective and less-time consuming method to use.