Marie Rosenkrantz Lindegaard

Agency as a Cause of Crime

Laub and Sampsons age-graded theory of social control posits that the greater is a persons agency, the less that person commits crime. But agency has a dark side as well. Some people choose to offend in order to transform their life; when this happens, agency is a cause of crime. In the present article we draw on the life course and rational choice perspectives to explore this idea. Our study is based on qualitative data obtained through interviews with and observations of offenders from socially disadvantaged areas in Cape Town, South Africa. Participants cited their offending as motivated by and effective in obtaining three kinds of status: belonging in a group, respect from peers, and wealth. Further research is needed to develop understanding of this relationship, especially in terms of how it is affected by structural conditions and culture.

Consequences of Expected and Observed Victim Resistance for Offender Violence during Robbery Events

Objectives: Drawing on the rational choice perspective, this study aims at explaining why some robberies take place with physical force while others occur only with threat. The focus is how expected and observed victim resistance impact physical force by robbers. Methods: We draw on quantitative and qualitative data obtained from 104 robbers who described 143 robbery events. Based on the coding of behavioral sequences between offenders and victims, we distinguish between the use of physical force at the onset from the use of physical force during the progression of the event. Results: At the onset of robberies, physical force of offenders is influenced by whether they judge the victim to be street credible. During the progression of robberies, offenders are more likely to use physical force against a resistant than against a compliant victim. Conclusions: At the onset of the robbery, offender violence is related to expected victim resistance; during the progression, it is related to observed victim resistance. Future research should focus on behavioral sequences within robbery events including the meaning of victim characteristics and victim behavior in different phases of the event.

Discordant expression of pro-B-type and pro-C-type natriuretic peptide in newborn infants of mothers with type 1 diabetes

BACKGROUND Maternal diabetes increases the risk of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy in the fetus. As signaling via the C-type natriuretic peptide (CNP) specific receptor protects against cardiac hypertrophy, we examined whether maternal type 1 diabetes affects the plasma concentrations of proCNP-derived peptides in newborn infants. METHODS Plasma concentrations of proCNP-derived peptides were measured in umbilical cord plasma and human placental tissue extracts using sequence-specific radioimmunoassays raised against N-terminal and C-terminal proCNP regions, respectively. RESULTS The median proCNP concentrations were similar in umbilical cord plasma from pregnant women with and without type 1 diabetes (17 pmol/L vs. 19 pmol/L, P not significant) and did not correlate with the proBNP concentrations in the same samples. However, the molar ratio between the proCNP and the CNP peptide was increased in umbilical cord plasma compared to adult plasma (4.6 vs. 1.1), which parallels our earlier findings for proBNP and BNP peptides. CONCLUSIONS There is a discordant expression of CNP and BNP peptides in newborn infants of mothers with diabetes. Moreover, fetal metabolism of proCNP and CNP appears to differ from healthy adults. The precise mechanism underlying these differences warrants further investigation.

Lessons Learned from Crime Caught on Camera

Objectives: The widespread use of camera surveillance in public places offers criminologists the opportunity to systematically and unobtrusively observe crime, their main subject matter. The purpose of this essay is to inform the reader of current developments in research on crimes caught on camera. Methods: We address the importance of direct observation of behavior and review criminological studies that used observational methods, with and without cameras, including the ones published in this issue. We also discuss the uses of camera recordings in other social sciences and in biology. Results: We formulate six key insights that emerge from the literature and make recommendations for future research. Conclusions: Camera recordings of real-life crime are likely to become part of the criminological tool kit that will help us better understand the situational and interactional elements of crime. Like any source, it has limitations that are best addressed by triangulation with other sources.

Weapons, Body Postures, and the Quest for Dominance in Robberies: A Qualitative Analysis of Video Footage

Objective: A small-scale exploration of the use of video analysis to study robberies. We analyze the use of weapons as part of the body posturing of robbers as they attempt to attain dominance. Methods: Qualitative analyses of video footage of 23 shop robberies. We used Observer XT software (version 12) for fine-grained multimodal coding, capturing diverse bodily behavior by various actors simultaneously. We also constructed story lines to understand the robberies as hermeneutic whole cases. Results: Robbers attain dominance by using weapons that afford aggrandizing posturing and forward movements. Guns rather than knives seemed to fit more easily with such posturing. Also, victims were more likely to show minimizing postures when confronted with guns. Thus, guns, as part of aggrandizing posturing, offer more support to robbers’ claims to dominance in addition to their more lethal power. In the cases where resistance occurred, robbers either expressed insecure body movements or minimizing postures and related weapon usage or they failed to impose a robbery frame as the victims did not seem to comprehend the situation initially. Conclusions: Video analysis opens up a new perspective of how violent crime unfolds as sequences of bodily movements. We provide methodological recommendations and suggest a larger scale comparative project.

Consolation in the aftermath of robberies resembles post-aggression consolation in chimpanzees

Post-aggression consolation is assumed to occur in humans as well as in chimpanzees. While consolation following peer aggression has been observed in children, systematic evidence of consolation in human adults is rare. We used surveillance camera footage of the immediate aftermath of nonfatal robberies to observe the behaviors and characteristics of victims and bystanders. Consistent with empathy explanations, we found that consolation was linked to social closeness rather than physical closeness. While females were more likely to console than males, males and females were equally likely to be consoled. Furthermore, we show that high levels of threat during the robbery increased the likelihood of receiving consolation afterwards. These patterns resemble post-aggression consolation in chimpanzees and suggest that emotions of empathic concern are involved in consolation across humans and chimpanzees.

Learning About Crime Prevention from Aborted Crimes: Intrapersonal Comparisons of Committed and Aborted Robbery

Crime prevention can benefit from knowledge about why prospective offenders sometimes do not perpetrate crimes they anticipated to perpetrate. What makes them call off the planned offense? This chapter describes what distinguishes aborted robberies from those that are committed; what mechanisms are responsible for calling off planned offenses; and which reasons offenders themselves provide for aborting robberies. Detailed data were collected amongst 74 incarcerated and 28 active offenders. All were asked to describe in detail a robbery they committed and one they aborted, including prospective places, targets, victims, bystanders, and co-offenders. In case of aborted robberies they were also asked why the robbery was canceled. Findings indicate that home robberies are aborted less often than street and commercial robberies, and that robberies planned more than an hour ahead are more likely to get aborted than robberies that were planned less than an hour ahead. Extensive anticipation appears to make offenders less flexible in adapting to unexpected events, and more likely to abort an anticipated robbery. Subjective reasons for aborting anticipated robberies are manifold, but include expected police and bystander interventions.

The Emotional Experience behind Sexually Offending in Context: Affective States Before, During, and After Crime Events

Objectives: The current study focused on the role of affective states in adult sexual offending. We look at the prevalence of a range of affective states throughout sexual crime events. We break down the crime event into three stages—immediately before, during, and after the offense. We examine transitions of affective states—stage by stage—but also across victims. Finally, we investigate the impact of situational factors on affective states. Method: The sample consisted of a total of 553 adult males who had been convicted of a sexual offense. Self-report data on sexual crime events were collected from these offenders. Apart from descriptive and bivariate analysis, “affective state-switching patterns” are investigated through transition matrices. Results: Findings show large variations in affective states before, during, and after the offense but show little variation across victims. Alcohol usage and offender–victim relationship were related to affective states of offenders. Conclusions: We conclude that the found association between affective states and decision-making of sexual offenders calls for more research on within crime event variations especially, and future research should focus on causal mechanisms related to affective states.

Patterns of Force, Sequences of Resistance: Revisiting Luckenbill with Robberies Caught on Camera

ABSTRACT Robberies are improvised encounters involving offender threat, sometimes force, and often victim resistance. While the association between threat, force, and resistance in robberies is well-established, sequential patterns are disputed due to biases of retrospective studies. To overcome these biases, we draw on CCTV camera recordings of 49 store robberies. Tentative findings suggest that lethal threat reduces victim resistance and thereby offender violence, except in robberies where offenders depend on victims in accessing the valuables. In those robberies, lethal threat increases the likelihood of victim resistance despite having no effect on offender violence. By providing more reliable and detailed accounts of real-life behavior during robberies, our analysis illustrates the potential of a newly emergent field of studies of crimes caught on camera.