Indicated a broad distinction between Organised
and disorganised offenders
Based on inteviews and case details of 36
sex offenders who volunteered to be
interviewed about their crimes
It involves: collecting data from police records and crime scene,
classifying the crime scene as organised/disorganised, looking into the
victim behaviour to create a hypothesis and creating a profile or the
likely criminal
Organised offenders:
Hide the body
Planned the attack
Unknown victim
Use of restraints
High intelligence
Sexually competent - live with partner
Experiencing anger/depression at time of attack
Disorganised offender:
Leave evidence and body in sight
Victim known
Sexually incompetent
Not planned
Live alone
severe mental illness
Canter et al - evidene against the typology
approach
Although the
organised/disorganised distinction is
widely cited - validity not been
established
Interviews conducted to establish the two types
were limited sample
Distinction is an oversimplification and
the addition of a third category questions
the notion of only two types of offender
Other classification systems-
Jenkins (1988) - suggested the respectable and predictable
type categories of murder
Holmes and de Burges- suggested 6 types that
could be defined according to the 14 characteristics