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Abstract
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VioLit summary:
OBJECTIVE:
The purpose of this article by Jacobs and Wright was to explore the role foreground conditions in armed robbery.
METHODOLOGY:
Using a snowball sampling technique, the authors collected self-reports from 86 (16-51 years of ages, 14 female, 83 African American) active robbers from St. Louis, Missouri. All respondents were known among criminal networks as active offenders, considered themselves active criminals, and claimed to have committed a robbery withing the last month. The authors explained in some detail how they made initial contact with the offenders and justified their data collection technique using logic and citations. Interviews were semistructured and focused on the thoughts and events surrounding the crime.
FINDINGS/DISCUSSION:
For those who don't already know, to examine the foreground of criminal (or any) behavior is to look at the immediate, active, and phenomenological environment where the action took place. This means giving primary attention, not to the background characteristics of individuals, but to the interactional context surrounding an action. The authors argued that background factors interact with foreground circumstances linking unmotivated action to motivated, criminal robbery.
In the section entitled "Fast Cash," the authors found that 80 of the 81 respondents reported committing a robbery out of need for money. The authors provided sample interview responses where the respondent discussed the need for money. The authors noted that this need was described in terms of sustenance, and sometimes in terms of sustaining a "party" lifestyle. In "Keeping Up Appearances" the authors noted that some respondents reported spending their robbery money in order to sustain an appearance of high status. The authors then asked the question: Why robbery? If the respondents reported a need for cash, why did they choose robbery over other legal means of obtaining money? According to the authors, respondents reported that the temporal distance between effort and payment is too great. In addition, employment was often seen as too restrictive (rules and time schedules). However, 25 respondents reported that they would take a "good job" if it were offered. In terms of borrowing (as an alternative to robbing), some respondents claimed it was repugnant, while other reported having exhausted the possibilities (e.g., family, friends). Robbery was reported as "better" than committing some other crimes (i.e., drug dealing or burglary) because of the time involved and because there was a higher risk associated with theses crime due to the number of people involved.
Drawing on their data and past research, the authors described an "etiological cycle of robbery"that involved the interplay of background forces, participation in street culture, the pursuit of illicit action/conspicuous consumption, financial desperation, robbery, and disposable cash. The authors argued that street culture is so consuming that involvement in it obliterates alternative sources of cash. The lifestyle limits options by closing rationality around a set of alternatives. The authors concluded that any research failing to take into account the entire context of the crime would always be limited. In addition, the authors stated that imprisonment and trying to convince robbers to "go straight" are insufficient because they fail to address the hidden motivational aspects of contexts withing a culture.
Offender Motivation
Robbery Causes
Robbery Offender
Crime Causes
Decision Making Process
Violence Causes
Adult Offender
Adult Violence
Adult Crime
Missouri
Juvenile Offender
Juvenile Crime
Juvenile Violence
Late Adolescence
Financial Factors
03-02 |