Typology of Street Criminal Retaliation

• NCJ Number: 206485
• Journal: Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency Volume: 41 Issue: 3 Dated: August 2004 Pages: 295-323
• Author(s): Bruce A. Jacobs
• Date Published: August 2004
• Length: 29 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Report (Study/Research)
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This article presents a typology of street criminal retaliation in an effort to refine the understanding of crime as social control.

Abstract

Retaliation is an important regulator of offender conduct and within the street criminal underworld retaliation is one of the only means to right perceived wrongs; recourse to law is largely unavailable to criminal offenders. Despite its seeming prevalence, the manner in which offenders express retaliatory impulses remains poorly specified in the literature. As such, the current study attempts to catalog the variation in, and possible reasons for, street criminal retaliation. In-depth, qualitative interviews were conducted with 33 active offenders recruited from the streets of St. Louis, Missouri during the summers of 2001 and 2002. The focus of the interviews was on the respondent’s experiences with retaliation. Qualitative techniques employed in the study included analytic induction, constant comparison, and domain analysis. The findings revealed a typology of criminal retaliation organized around two axial factors: whether retaliation occurs immediately following an affront and whether face-to-face contact with the violator is established during retaliation. Six types of criminal retaliation emerged around these axial factors: reflexive retaliation, reflexively displaced retaliation, calculated retaliation, deferred retaliation, sneaky retaliation, and imperfect retaliation. Each are described in turn. The findings underscore the importance of direct confrontation in retaliatory strikes and of punitive excess. The range of retaliatory options available to street-level offenders is wider than previously suggested, indicating that there may be more contemplative features at work than has been assumed. Future research may focus on the extent to which retaliatory preferences are stable across time. Notes, references