Geographical Profiling

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Geographical Profiling
2014-02-19 18:25:03
Psychology Criminology camturnbull

AQA PSYB3 Psychology
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  1. What is the bottom up approach according to Boon and Davis in 1992?
    The suggestion of a picture of the criminal based on detailed evidence gathered from the crime scene and information about the crime
  2. What is the difference between the top down and bottom up approaches
    • Bottom up focusses on analysis of existing evidence aiming to identify associations between offences and offender.
    • Top down uses subjective conclusions from experience of past crime and interviews with offenders
  3. What is interpersonal coherence
    • The notion that variations in a crime scene suggest variations in a criminal's life
    • The offender deals with victims the same way they deal with people in their everyday lives
  4. What did David canter achieve in 1998?
    Used the bottom up approach to assist police in the arrest of John Duffy (the railway rapist) and his conviction for two murders and four rapes
  5. What does geographical profiling involve?
    The analysis of the locations of linked crime scenes minorder to suggest a likely home or base of operations of the offender.
  6. On what assumption is geographical profiling based?
    Most offenders to operate in an area they know well
  7. What did Canter and Gregory suggest in 1994?
    • Many offenders have a crime range of less than 2 miles 
    • With investigative psychology the knowledge of locations can help to narrow down a surveillance area
  8. What did Kind suggest in 2008?
    Sites of connected crimes create a, 'centre of gravity', which suggests a certain area for an offender's base of operations
  9. What did Bartlett propose in 1932?
    • Information is stored as mental schemas:
    • Mental schema: An organised set of info specific to an individual.
    • Mental map: An organised set of information about spatial info developed when the personal understanding of spacial info is formed
  10. What was the aim of the Lundigran and Canter study of 2001?
    To study the spatial behaviour of 120 serial murderers in the USA 
  11. What methodology was employed during the Lundigran and Canter study of 2001?
    • Information from solved murder cases was obtained 
    • For each offender, researchers analysed distances between the offender's home location and body disposal sites 
    • Smallest space analysis was used to determines patterns of disposal 
  12. What were the results of the Lundigran and Canter study of 2001?
    • The offender's home was geographically central in the pattern
    • The location of each disposal site tended to be in a different direction to the previous disposal site 
    • This effect was most evident for offenders that travelled a shorter distance (under 10km)
  13. What can be concluded from the Lundigran and Canter study of 2001?
    Spatial information about body disposal sites may be useful in locating an offender's base 
  14. How can offender profiling be seen as objective and reliable?
    It is based on a psychological theory about how information is represented 
  15. How is David Canter's approach to profiling more scientific than that of the FBI?
    • It is based more on Psychological theories and methodologies 
    • It attempts to formulate psychological theories that will show how and why variations in criminal behaviour occur 
    • Analysing their behaviour during the act of an  offence will reveal a pattern which offers clues into their everyday life
  16. What did Goodwill and Alison find in 2006?
    • Geographical profiling can be used for other crimes
    • Looked at 215 cases of burglary and found that geographical information was more useful in linking the cases to one burglar than information on timing of the crime, crime scheme information or characteristics of the dwelling
  17. What did Canter and Young find in 2008?
    • Location of the crime alone is not enough to enable a base to be inferred 
    • The location must be understood in the context of the offender's behaviour at the scene, the time of the crime and the victim
    • Geographical and physical data must be combined
  18. Give examples of high profile failures of geographical profiling
    • The Rachel Nickell case
    • The wrongful identification and imprisonment of Colin Stagg

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