Acquisitive crime PDF

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this 5 page document tells you what acquisitive crime is, Theft Act 1968, situational crime prevention (SCP) and the study of residential burglary, background of SCP, Rational Choice Theory, burglars, target selection, ethnographic research, and benefits of virtual reality. ...

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Crime and Society ACQUISITIVE CRIME What is acquisitive crime? Stealing, theft - lots of different types of theft such as robbery, burglary Theft Act 1968 S1. A person is guilty of theft if they dishonestly, appropriates property belonging to another with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it. S8. A person is guilty of robbery if he/she steals, and immediately before or at the time of doing so, and in order to do so, he/she uses force on any person or puts or seeks to put any person in fear of being then and there subjected to force. S9. A person is guilty of burglary if— a) he/she enters any building or part of a building as a trespasser and with intent to steal, inflict GBH  or commit damage; or b) having entered any building or part of a building as a trespasser he/she steals or attempts to steal anything in the building or that part of it or inflicts or attempts to inflict on any person therein any grievous bodily harm. Why study acquisitve crime? ● 66% of police recorded crime (2016) ● 80% of all incidents estimated by the Crime Survery for England and Wales (CSEW, 2016), an estimated 5,066,000 incidents ● Important because there is an impact on victim and offender, repeat and frequent offending, links to drug use ● The money that they make is relatively low adn therefore, have to commit multiple to make a decent amount of money Situational crime prevention and the study of residential bulgary ● Primary crime prevention or ‘situational crime prevention’ - reducing opportunities at the scene of the potential crime - ‘target hardening’ (alarms, CCTV) ● Secondary crime prevention - divert people at high risk of becoming offenders, before they do so. ● Tertiary crime prevention - seeks to treat or divert those who already established in a life of offending. ○ Automatic means without intention or awareness - huge crime prevention implications ○ Educate burglars to recognise the early/automatic part of the offence chain and think about their motivations ○ Implications for other crimes as well ● Lots of evidence that SCP reduces different types of crime (Pease, 2002) ● Will never work totally without combining it with secondary and tertiary crime prevention Background of SCP ● Emerged from the 1980’s and was very popular, provided an explanation as to what it is about the environment that makes people commit crimes. Popular from political and police so that they can make changes to lower the risk of crime (Neighbourhood watch schemes, crime prevention leaflets put through doors). ● Alternative to dispositional theories of crime (individual and societal)

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Reducing the pyshical opportunities for crime - cost efficient, immediately rewarding approach to crime reduction (for both public and politicians) Very exciting for researchers - analyse the criminogenic situation, can see what is working and what is not working

Rational Choice Theory (RCT) ● Rational decision making - choice ● Environment and opportunity as criminogenic ● Wider range of potential offender ● Crime-specific focus ● Cost / benefit weighing Burglars Motivation? Skill? Lifestyle? ● Links to substance abuse (cause & effect?) ● Engagement in legitimate work? ● Hedonistic lifestyle ● Life as a party (Bennett & Wright, 1984) ● Opportunistic vs planned approach? Most people have their own idea of what burglars look like i.e - balicalavas, disguised Early burglary research - how did we learn about burglarys? ● 5% of burlgars will see an opportunity and take their shots, the majority of people will plan it ● In interviews they may lie because they want to make themselves sound better than what they are and psychologicaly we cannot remember the exact facts Burglary in a Dwelling: the Offence, the Offender and the Victim. Maguire, E. M. W., and Bennett, T. (1982) ● High level, middle range and low level burglar ● Environmental cues influence target selection in a systematic way: burlgary rarely an impulsive, indiscriminate act Burglars on Burglary. Bennett, T. & Wright, R. (1984) ● First to use experimental design: interviews, videos, photos ● Level of planning and sequential decision-making ● Planners, Searchers and Opportunists - bounded rationality ● Occupancy, surveillability, accessibility and security levels in the property Nee & Taylor (1988;2000) Suvery of 50 residential burglars in prison to try and replicate the UK - Very similar picture in terms of sequential decision-making, planning, goods target, types of cue used

Crime and Society ACQUISITIVE CRIME Cues important in target selection ● Location ● size/type target ● Position ● escape routes ● Visibility ● dogs/alarms ● target hardening ● Occupancy Findings: ● Each target appraised in relation to its neighbours ● B’s = superior navigation (cognitive scripts) ● Conditional deterrents ● CP advice fails to acknowledge the dynamic nature of cues in the environment and comparative bulnerabilty of properties Ethnographic research Interviweing convicted burlglarys - they got caught? Are they the rubbish ones? They are in prison and therefore, you dont know if what they are saying is reliable Burglars on the Job: Streetlife and Residential Break-ins Wright, R.T. and Decker, S. (1994) Boston: Northeastern University Press Breaking and Entering: An Ethnographic Analysis of Burglary. Cromwell, P., Olson, J. and Avary, D. (1991). Newbury Park: Sage. Findings very supportive of prison-based work (Wright & Decker) Constantly be aware of opportunities in the environment, they don’t just go out anf pick houses ● Money - life ‘as a party’ ● Awareness of potential targets - routine activities ● Use of situational cues (and relative nature) ● Conditional deterrents (dogs/alarms) ● Locks not so much (already committed) What happens when they are in the house? + Cognitive scripts are used once inside the house - learning Expertise? - Components of expertise (Palmeri et al., 2004): - Automaticity - do not need to think consciously about what we do - Performance speed increases noticeably with expertise - Experts can multitask easily when making expert decisions - Experts automatically and unconsciously seek out stimuli associated with their expertise in any environment ... and this cannot be turned off - Stored in long term schemas (cognitive scripts) guide behaviour

Crime and Society ACQUISITIVE CRIME Research project interviewiing burglars from different prisons Nee, C. & Meenaghan, A. (2006). Expert decision-making in burglars. British Journal of Criminology. 46, 935-949. - 45/50 had a routine search pattern - Most common search (2/3rds): Master bedroom, adult bedrooms, living room, dining room, study, kitchen - Started with drawers in bedrooms but found it hard to verbally articulate their exact search – automaticity - Young children’s bedrooms rarely entered – not lucrative enough Nee et al (2015) New methods for examining expertise in burglars in natural and simulated environments: Preliminary findings - Real house and simulated version of the same house - Burglars spent significantly more time in the high value areas - Fewer items but worth around 1k more - Burglars = rear; students = front - Search - fewer, high value rooms, less haphazard - Both groups burgled the real house and the virtual house almost identically - good indication of what happened in real life Preliminary findings with real burglars - More detailed virtual house - 5 houses - More items - Realism - Expert burglary - Non-b offenders - Matched non offenders Findings... ● Superior navigation of neighbourhood ● End of terrace ● Rear of property ● When in propety there was more targeted search of property ● Focus on high value areas ● Items stolen - less valuable (in total) Benefits of the use of VR ● Enables observation and recording of offending behaviour in real time ● Ethical ● Experimental control ● Manipulation of variables ○ Testing crime prevention strategies ● Larger samples ● More varied samples

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Particularly relevant to offences that may be guided by expertise: ○ Unconscious and automatic decision-making - below awareness of offender - cannot retrieve in interview...