Offender-based Research Research Articles

Are frequent offenders more difficult to find and less willing to participate? An analysis of unit non-response in an online survey among offenders

The interpretation of research findings based on self-reported delinquency requires knowledge of how response rates depend on the attributes of potential respondents, including their prior offending. The purpose of the present study was to quantify the extent to which, in a sample of offenders, the two main determinants of non-response – non-contact and refusal – depend on prior offending frequency. We used binomial and multinomial regression models to assess whether frequent offenders are more difficult to contact and less willing to participate in online surveys. These hypotheses are tested on a sample of offenders who were invited by regular mail to participate in the Online Activity Space Inventory Survey (OASIS), an online survey on mobility and safety. Controlling for gender and age as potential confounders, our findings do not confirm that frequent offenders are less likely to be successfully contacted, but they do confirm that, if contacted, they are less likely to participate. Response rates in offender-based research are selective and thus potentially biased towards infrequent offenders. They generally favour conservative estimates and conclusions, implying that any associations found between crime and its predictors are likely stronger in reality.

The Drug Business as a Field of Struggle in Turkey

ABSTRACT The organization of the street-level drug business has been a central concern of many contemporary urban crime ethnographies in the West; however, it has never been researched in Turkey. Addressing the literature gap, this article examines the methods of a local drug enterprise in Ankara through offender-based research. Ethnographic data demonstrates that the local drug trade tends to be structured as a field of struggle in which agents make affective investments and wrestle for material and symbolic rewards, characterized by fast cash and notoriety. Resultantly, two main ranks emerge, of drug enterprise owners and dealers/lookouts. Enterprise owners journey far in their criminal trajectories and thus hold a higher level of street capital dependent on their prestige and infamous reputations. However, lookouts consist of lower-class, disadvantaged youths lacking any experience aside from daring and physical prowess. Their search for recognition and an ethos of criminal cultural consumerism create a potential source of conflict and therefore nourishes the dynamism of the field. Unless the marginalized youths’ such psychosocial dynamics are considered, anti-drug policies will go wide of the mark due to their ignorance.

Learning About Situational Crime Prevention From Offenders: Using a Script Framework to Compare the Commission of Completed and Disrupted Sexual Offenses

The collective knowledge of offenders is one of the richest ways to advance understandings of crime commission and effective crime prevention. Drawing on self-report data from 53 incarcerated offenders in three Australian states and territories, the current article presents an innovative method which, through a crime script framework, allows for a first-time comparison of completed versus disrupted sexual offenses involving adult female and child victims at each stage of the crime commission process. Findings (a) highlight the critical need to boost the efficacy of situational prevention in the crime setup phase of the sexual offense script and (b) showcase how incorporating a script framework in offender-based research can identify new directions for crime prevention

Residential burglary target selection: An analysis at the property-level using Google Street View

ObjectivesTo quantitatively test findings from offender-based literature—primarily consisting of small-sample interviews or experimental scenarios with convicted burglars—to investigate the extent to which the physical attributes of residential homes and their immediate surrounding area contribute to the risk of burglary. MethodsCollecting fresh, micro-level data using Google Street View (GSV) as a tool of Systematic Social Observation (SSO), we utilise a case-control design to isolate property-level effects. Analysis is carried out using conditional logistic regression. ResultsThe ease of escape from a property, the extent to which the dwelling is accessible, and the extent to which it is closed to surveillance from neighbours and passers-by are all positively related to burglary risk. There is no evidence that indications of resident wealth are related to the likelihood of victimisation, or that the effect of surveillability varies depending on the extent of collective efficacy in a neighbourhood. ConclusionsBurglary target selection does not stop at the selection of a target neighbourhood, but certain characteristics of individual properties within the same neighbourhood are in turn indicative of burglary risk. Quantitative analyses partly support findings from the offender-based research on residential burglary. We encourage future research to consider using GSV as a method of collecting fresh data, with the broader aim of explaining criminal behaviour at micro-spatial scales.

Child sexual abuse in youth-oriented organisations: tapping into situational crime prevention from the offender’s perspective

How to prevent child sexual abuse in youth-oriented organisations is a concern in our society for a number of reasons. One of these is that evidence indicates that sexual offenders, once they are recruited by a youth-oriented organisation, have the opportunity to abuse children for years before being detected and/or arrested. This phenomenon is also under intense media scrutiny, which is likely to lead parents and society in a direction of panic. In the tradition of offender-based research, and using a sample of 23 Canadian adult sex offenders who offended in a youth-oriented organisation (e.g., schools), we examined self-reported data from a situational crime prevention perspective. We specifically focused on information provided by offenders on three dimensions: (1) how to identify potential offenders during recruitment interviews; (2) what policies or regulations to implement in youth-oriented organisations to prevent child sexual abuse; and, (3) what parents could do to reduce the risk of sexual victimisation of their children. Then, the 25 situational prevention measures table is adopted to provide an organisational framework to map out suggestions made by offenders to inform prevention.

Seeing the Offenders’ Perspective Through the Eye-Tracking Device

This article examines the utility of a novel tool for conducting offender-based research: the “eye-tracking device” (ETD), which is designed to identify what a person sees in the center of his or her vision. First, we review prior research using the ETD. Second, we detail the advantages and troubles we encountered when using it to study simulated shoplifting in retail outlets among 39 active offenders. Benefits of using the ETD include video recording what participants look at, which may serve as quantitative or qualitative data, and, when coupled with a questionnaire, the video footage may be used as a memory prompt and source of verification. Thus, using the ETD should reduce two sources of measurement bias: participants’ limited recall and intentional fabrication. However, limitations of the ETD are that it may inaccurately record what participants see in their peripheral vision and its physical structure makes some participants feel more inconspicuous than usual, both of which are pertinent to criminals’ attempts to avoid apprehension. The peripheral vision problem limits the quantitative output’s validity, whereas the physical structure concern potentially diminishes the generalizability of results. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for theory and research.

Standardizing research methods on violent offenders: Perpetrator-motive research design and consensual qualitative research

To date, there has been a modicum of research attention to offender populations, particularly where interviews of offenders have been conducted. Further, the literature in this area has been hampered by several limitations that make cross-study comparisons and replication difficult. The goals of this manuscript are to: (1) review offender-based interview research, focusing on data collection methods and data analytic strategies, (2) highlight limitations that exist, and (3) discuss the use of standardized and replicable procedures. From the examination conducted, the authors suggest that published articles representing this body of research frequently provide inadequate detail of the methodological and analytic procedures utilized. To move the science of offender-based research forward, the authors provide an example of standardized data collection procedures (perpetrator-motive research design; PMRD), and describe one example of an established qualitative research method for data analysis, consensual qualitative research (CQR). Using standardized methods and procedures will advance knowledge about offenders and ultimately lead to enhanced applications for practitioners. Moreover, the implementation of such practices will increase the ability to replicate methods and analyses, increasing the value and utility of the research, and enabling cross-study comparisons to be made.

Incentives for Research Participation: Policy and Practice From Canadian Corrections

We explored current policies and practices on the use of incentives in research involving adult offenders under correctional supervision in prison and in the community (probation and parole) in Canada. We contacted the correctional departments of each of the Canadian provinces and territories, as well as the federal government department responsible for offenders serving sentences of two years or more. Findings indicated that two departments had formal policy whereas others had unwritten practices, some prohibiting their use and others allowing incentives on a case-by-case basis. Given the differences across jurisdictions, it would be valuable to examine how current incentive policies and practices are implemented to inform national best practices on incentives for offender-based research.

Criminology as social control: discriminatory research & its role in the reproduction of social inequalities and crime

The law discriminates against low status offenders, but so too might criminologists during the course of their research. In this paper, we address the following question: Does the social status of lawbreakers have an effect on their likelihood of being recruited to offender-based research? The answer to this question is important for reasons that extend beyond academic criminology. If criminologists discriminate, then they themselves are active agents in the reproduction of social disadvantage. If criminology is to reduce inequality, the field must first identify and reduce discriminatory behavior within its own research community.

Profiling stranger rapists: Linking offence behaviour to previous criminal histories using a regression model

International research has suggested that rapist criminal histories can be predicted from certain offence behaviours. Ninety-six solved stranger rape cases were examined to determine if there was consistency in a New Zealand sample. Rapist behaviours during the offence were compared with criminal convictions prior to the rape. The primary statistical technique used was likelihood ratio stepwise binary logistic regression. Predictive utility of the results was limited, due to significant correlation coefficients between the criminal history variables. Nevertheless, the current study reflected the general findings of similar descriptive international research. These outcomes were: the majority of stranger rapists had prior criminal convictions, and the majority of those convictions were for property offences not sexual offending. Furthermore, ethnic minorities were over-represented among the offenders, and the majority of stranger rapists started committing their first known rapes in their mid- to late 20s. Finally, methodological difficulties were encountered during this study. This highlights the need to refine existing statistical approaches to predictive offender-based research.

Examining burglars' target selection: Interview, experiment or ethnomethodology?

Ethnomethodologists in the field of offender-based research have recently criticised the earlier use of prison-based samples in research on residential burglary. They claim that interviewing burglars in their natural environment has produced findings of greater validity and reliability. By describing further analysis of data from earlier experimental research on burglars in prison, and drawing on findings from other work on residential burglary, this article sets out to highlight the striking similarity between findings from interview, experimental and ethnographic studies in this area. Far from discounting earlier experimental and interview studies, the recent ethnographic works have served to build on and complement earlier work. The value of using a variety of methods in offender-based research is then discussed.