NCJ Number
158809
Journal
Studies on Crime and Crime Prevention Volume: 4 Issue: 2 Dated: (1995) Pages: 197-219
Date Published
1995
Length
23 pages
Annotation
This article summarizes an emerging theory that explains the incidence of expropriative crime (expropriation of goods and services) as an expression of diverse behavioral strategies that derive from normal patterns of population-level social organization and interactions.
Abstract
By examining the nature of expropriative strategies themselves and the context created by other strategies present in a population, the authors can explain within one theoretical framework the link between key macro- and individual-level forces responsible for patterns of expropriative crime. The authors' evolutionary ecological theory recognizes the effects of contextual factors on individual behavior and fixes the roots of crime in a matrix of social patterns and processes. Whatever the influence of criminogenic individual traits and attributes on individual behavior, the authors contend that using strategies rather than individuals as the unit of analysis is important, because characteristics of strategies and interactions between them contribute independently to their evolution, proliferation, or decline. Since expropriative crime strategies are transmitted primarily through cultural media, and culture is a system of inheritance, expropriative crime is susceptible to evolutionary analysis. After summarizing the basic tenets of the evolutionary ecological theory, the authors identify the properties of expropriative strategies that increase their chances for successful completion and replication. The article next discusses how expropriative strategies are transmitted. Finally, suggestions are offered for limiting the proliferation of illegal expropriative acts. The authors discuss why the dynamic nature of expropriative strategy evolution makes it so difficult to control such offenses within democratic industrial societies. 39 references