Victim Selection Procedures Among Economic Criminals - The Rational Choice Perspective (From Reasoning Criminal, P 39-52, 1986, Derek B Cornish and Ronald V Clarke, eds. - See NCJ-102282)

• NCJ Number: 102284
• Author(s): D Walsh
• Date Published: 1986
• Length: 14 pages
• Sale Source: Springer-Verlag
• Publication Type: Survey
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This paper contrasts the decisionmaking activities of commercial burglars and robbers and then analyzes the nature of the criminal's sources of information and the way in which this is handled during the assessment and planning phase preceding the criminal event.

Abstract

After discussing distinctions between normative and bounded rationality, the author reports on his interviews with 45 imprisoned burglars and 69 imprisoned robbers about their techniques of victim/target selection and rejection. The results document a subterranean knowledge market where brokers peddle information about likely opportunities to supplement data already gathered by the criminal through family, work, and social networks. The paper examines the criminals' information-processing strategies. A discussion of attitudes to risk, the importance of previous experience, and the roles of luck and fatalism provide insights to how criminals handle sudden hazards during commission of the crime. Slightly over half the burglars and robbers in this sample undertook some degree of planning, but robbers claimed significantly more determination than burglars to carry out a particular crime. 13 references.