NCJ Number
213006
Journal
British Journal of Criminology Volume: 46 Issue: 1 Dated: January 2006 Pages: 1-15
Date Published
January 2006
Length
15 pages
Annotation
This study examined the sociocultural context in which British street robbers plan and commit their offenses.
Abstract
The study found that British robbers used their robberies as a means to obtain fast cash to pay for drugs, alcohol, and various nonessential status-enhancing items. Robberies were thus the source of income for people who lived within a street culture that emphasizes living for an immediate "feel-good" experience based in drugs and material status without regard for consequences or long-range planning. It was a lifestyle of desperation in the sense that they could not afford to pay for it except by impulsive robberies. Robberies also tended to fit patterns of aggressive and violent behavior that had no regard for the needs or feelings of others. Robbery, therefore, was not a rational choice based on a consideration of alternatives and measured consequences, but rather an impulsive act of desperation used as a source of income for a lifestyle of immediate personal gratification. Study data were collected as part of a larger research project on the nature of violent street crime in the United Kingdom. Data for the current study were obtained from 27 inmates (25 men and 2 women with a mean age of 19) in prisons in South Wales and the southwest of England, which meant that most of them cane from the large urban areas of Cardiff or Bristol. Based on semistructured interviews, the inmates described 38 separate robberies. The interview addressed the offender's personal and criminal justice history, the circumstances and motives for their most recent street robbery, details on any other forms of street violence they had committed, and the nature of his/her lifestyle prior to imprisonment. 34 references