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CHAPTER 8 Crime and Property

INTRODUCTION Official statistics around the world suggest that by far the most frequently reported crime is property crime

(Newman, 1999). So what is property crime? Broadly speaking, property crime involves stealing and dishonestly obtaining or damaging another’s

property, whether tangible goods or intangible property. All this may seem very straightforward. However, the distinction between what is unambiguously criminal and what is culturally tolerated behaviour is not always so clear-cut. For example, the dishonest acquisition of another’s property is not always perceived as ‘theft’ by the offender or by the victim. Pickpocketing is seen as unacceptable and criminal, whereas hotel employees stealing food, wine or cash and hotel guests stealing linen, art or silverware from their rooms may be tolerated by the victim or justified as ‘perks’ or ‘souvenirs’ by the perpetrator. Similarly, we tend to associate ‘fraud’ with crime for gain or major financial scandals (see Chapter 11). Yet it is not always easy to draw a line between ‘enterprise’ and ‘dishonesty’, or between dishonest behaviour that is clearly ‘illegal’ and the hustles, scams and confidence tricks of ‘con-merchants’, false advertising of salespersons or pyramid schemes, and the behaviour of many others involved in everyday commercial exchanges.

In this chapter we look at the different forms and patterns of property crime, our attitudes towards its perpetrators, the characteristics of different types of property crime offenders, issues surrounding the risk of victimization and its distribution, and the impact of property crime on individual victims and communities. The aim is to challenge some of the popular assumptions about property crime and property crime offenders and to broaden our understanding of the crime problem and what is to be done about it.

PATTERNS OF PROPERTY CRIME

What we place into the category of ‘property crime’ makes a big difference to the range of behaviour we have to explain. Chapter 2 shows the problems of using crime and judicial statistics as a measure of actual levels of criminal activities in society. Nevertheless, crime statistics provide a useful starting point for understanding patterns of crime and the decisions of those responsible for controlling crime. From the 1830s onwards, crime has been classified into six main types: offences against the person; offences against property (with violence); offences against property (without violence); malicious offences against property; offences against the currency; and miscellaneous offences (Emsley, 2002). The pattern that can be drawn from the statistics shows a steady increase in crime, especially property crime, in the late eighteenth century, becoming much sharper from the first decade of the nineteenth century to the close of the 1840s, and then a general decline in crime until the end of the nineteenth century, except, most noticeably, for burglary (Emsley, 1996a: 32).

Many historians have explained the changing level of property crime by referring to the combined effects of key changes in British social and economic life during this period: population growth; urbanisation and the capitalisation of industry; and changing levels of unemployment and economic hardship. Historians who adopted a class conflict perception of society saw property crime as an element of the developing struggle

KEY ISSUES What can be identified as property crimes? How does the pattern of property crime vary across time and place? What are the characteristics of property crime offenders? How is the risk of victimization socially distributed?

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between capital and labour. They argued that new work practices brought about by industrialisation, and changes in payment for labour and in notions of property ownership, meant that traditional rural popular culture and customs (e.g. gathering fallen wood for fuel, taking wild game, collecting scrap metal) were increasingly criminalised (Thompson, 1977). Seen in this light, the thefts of poor men might be understood as resistance to capitalism and new work discipline. Other historians, however, turn to social and court data that reveal a relationship between capital and labour far more complex than a simple class conflict model might suggest. They stressed the significance of changes in the administration of criminal justice (such as the establishment of the new police forces), the civilisation of the population, a diminishing fear about the dangerous classes, and a corresponding decline in the reporting and prosecuting of small-scale theft, especially in the second half of the mid-nineteenth century (see Emsley, 1996a). Court records show that most thefts involved everyday objects of relatively little value and that very many of the victims were relatively poor people. In the long run, the changes in the economy meant that people had more disposable income and more movable property, and shops had more goods for consumers, which in turn prompted changes in the opportunities for and style of theft.

The dominance of property offences continued into the twentieth century. Conventional and new forms of property crime were rampant during the Second World War even though it was commonly regarded as a golden age of community spirit and national pride. The war created massive opportunities for crime for everyone – from organised gangs and professional criminals to ‘ordinary’ and ‘respectable’ people. Blackouts and bombed buildings made looting especially easy; because of rationing, many people took to fiddling and forging their food, petrol and clothes coupons; and profiteering and the black market boomed (Calder, 1991; Fraser, 1994). The steady increase of crime during the inter-war and post-war periods might arguably reflect the economic difficulties generated by the Depression as well as the temptations created by the first signs of the consumer society. For certain social classes and in certain areas of Britain, consumer booms (notably of the 1930s and 1950s) generated both more goods for those with disposable income and the desire for more goods, which very likely resulted in increased property crime. The consumer booms and technological revolution of the post-war decades put into circulation a mass of portable, high-value goods such as televisions, radios and stereos that presented attractive new targets and new opportunities for crime. For example, car crime rose sharply because there were many more valuable cars available on every city street at all times and often unattended than there were before the Second World War.

The range of property crime activities has also broadened significantly and, in some cases, developed into sophisticated transnational businesses generating high profits. For example, car theft is no longer simply a domestic problem or the province of teenagers engaged in random acts of theft. ‘Thefts to order’ (especially of luxury cars) are now well organised and sophisticated operations – from the theft itself, the forging of plates and documentation, through to the smuggling of the cars across the US–Mexican border or to ‘far-flung destinations’ such as Russia and China. Developments in computing and telecommunications technology have generated greater opportunities for theft and enabled new or existing forms of deviance to be carried out more extensively, more quickly, more efficiently and with greater ease of concealment (Grabosky and Smith, 1998; Thomas and Loader, 2000).

This argument can be extended to the emergence of ‘new’ everyday property crimes such as bank or credit card fraud. The expansion of automated banking and the increased use of ‘plastic money’ have posed a new set of risks to the banking industry and customers. The fraudulent use of stolen credit and bank cards was described as one of the fastest-growing, and most favoured, of financial crimes at local and street level in many societies in the late 1980s (Tremblay, 1986). The availability of cheap technology such as swipe machines, and simple techniques such as ‘skimming’, which involves reading and copying secret coded details on cards, has pushed up the costs of credit card fraud even further.

COMPARATIVE EXPERIENCES

With the notable exceptions of Japan and Switzerland, all the available evidence from industrialised countries points to a rapid and sustained increase in crime, especially property crime, in the post-war period. Such increases in crime have occurred not only in periods of economic downturn and depression but also during times of full employment and exceptional living standards. The 1960s were years of affluence, yet against all conventional wisdom, crime continued to rise in cities of the United States as well as in major centres of European countries. C

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Criminologists are divided as to the reasons behind such increase and, by implication, what should be done about it. For example, neo-conservatives such as James Q. Wilson have singled out the immediate post-war idea of a caring welfare state, the supposed permissiveness of the 1960s and the increases in crime as proof that social democratic theorising on the causes and solutions to crime was flawed (Wilson, 1975). The focus on the falling moral standards and weakening sources of social authority (especially in family standards) as major causes of crime had a significant influence on the law-and-order agendas on both sides of the Atlantic during the Bush, Reagan and Thatcher administrations. In contrast, writing from a left realist perspective, Jock Young has argued that even an absolute increase of prosperity at a national level tells us little about material inequality in society. According to the relative deprivation thesis, people have different expectations depending on what they feel they deserve. They may compare their economic situation with that of a reference group and feel relatively deprived when these expectations are not met. The argument is that faced with signs of evident wealth and possessions in neighbouring communities, unemployed youth could be motivated to commit street and property crimes because of emotional frustration, latent animosities and lack of opportunities (Young, 1986; Lea and Young, 1984; and see Chapter 5 of this book).

Following almost universal increases in property crime during the 1970s and 1980s, recorded property crimes in the United States, Britain and other European countries have since experienced a general decline. In the United States, recorded crime (comprising mainly property crimes such as shoplifting, vehicle thefts and burglaries) fell by 16 per cent over the period 1989–99. In England and Wales, property crime also generally fell during the latter part of the twentieth century (Barclay et al., 2001). Criminologists are again divided as to the reasons behind such reductions in crime. While some American commentators have drawn attention to the tougher criminal justice policies and substantial increase in imprisonment rates as possible explanations, the experience of other countries provides a counter to this. Canada’s record on crime, for example, mirrors that of the United States, but without an equivalent increase in prison numbers. Variations in sentencing and imprisonment across Europe also challenge the idea that harsher punishment necessarily underlies the reduction in property crime (Newman, 1999).

Figure 8.1 Police-recorded crime and British Crime Survey (BCS) crime by type of crime, 2002–3.

Source: Simmons and Dodd (2003).

Note: The BCS definition of common assault includes minor injuries. From 2002–3 the definition of recorded crime does not include minor injuries.

THE HIDDEN FIGURE OF PROPERTY CRIME C

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In 2002–3, property offences accounted for around 80 per cent of all recorded crimes in England and Wales. They include burglary, theft and criminal damage (robbery offences are officially categorised as crime of violence). Of course, interpreting official statistics is fraught with difficulties. Official crime statistics do not provide an objective and incontrovertible measure of criminal behaviour. Instead, they often fluctuate according to the organisational constraints and priorities of the criminal justice system. For example, changes in police practices and priorities will have a significant effect on the official crime data. High-profile planned operations against a particular type of offence (such as burglary, drugs or street robberies) will inevitably bring about an increase in arrests and the discovery and recording of many new offences in the targeted areas. Conversely, numbers may fall owing to a withdrawal of police interest in a particular type of crime.

Globally, around two in three victims of burglaries report their victimization to the police. According to the International Crime Victim Survey (1989–96), the level of reporting is highest in New World nations (the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand) and Western Europe (over 80 per cent) but much lower in Latin America, Asia and Africa (between 40 and 60 per cent), mainly because the incident seems too ‘trivial’ or the victim feels nothing can be done about it (Mayhew and Van Dijk, 1997). In some countries, notably in Latin America, fear or dislike of the police is also a factor. The extent of insurance cover is another important factor. In most African and many Asian and Latin American countries, only between 10 and 20 per cent of the victim survey respondents (as opposed to at least 70 per cent in most industrialised countries) are insured against household burglary. All this suggests that a hidden figure of property crime exists around the world.

The dominance of property crime in the official crime data reflects not only the prevalence of certain types of property crime but also their high reporting rates. For instance, the British Crime Surveys (BCSs) have consistently shown that thefts of cars and burglaries in which something is stolen are almost always reported to the police, partly because of the seriousness of the offence, partly because victims who are insured need to report the crime in order to make an insurance claim. On the other hand, robbery, theft from the person, and attempted burglaries where nothing is stolen have traditionally resulted in much lower reporting and recording rates (Simmons and Dodd, 2003: 12–13).

Cross-national comparisons of victim survey data also suggest there are significant variations in the types of goods taken in burglaries and the motive behind the theft. In developing nations, stolen goods often include money, food and simple household objects such as cutlery or linen, most probably for personal use. One study in Central and Eastern Europe found that in many cases the burglars systematically stripped the home, even taking used clothes. ‘In such cases the overall value of burglary might have been less, but the relative loss to the victim and the consequential impact of the crime might have been more pronounced’ (quoted in Mawby, 2001: 41). In the more affluent countries, where most people keep their money and jewellery in the bank or in safes, burglars generally give preference to objects that are easily resold such as electrical appliances, VCRs, hi-fi equipment, furniture and art objects.

BOX 8.1 OPERATION BUMBLEBEE: A CASE STUDY OF A POLICE OPERATION AGAINST BURGLARY

Operation Bumblebee was launched across the Metropolitan Police area in 1993 as a high-profile campaign against burglary. There was huge publicity surrounding the operation through multi-agency partnerships, a poster and leaflet campaign, a ‘stop and speak’ campaign in crime ‘hot spots’ to create the impression of intensive police activity, and a ‘Bumblebee property and crime prevention roadshow’. Significant police resources were directed towards preventing and solving burglary offences and raising public awareness of the problem. Dedicated burglary squads were set up to carry out intensive operations, targeting prolific local burglars or high-risk areas, backed up by surveillance teams and other services such as forensic science and local intelligence units.

Operation Bumblebee had a significant impact on the incidence of recorded burglary. In the seven months following its launch, recorded burglary offences fell by over 14,000, a decrease of 12.8 per cent. The police clear-up rate for burglary also increased from 10.9 per cent in 1992 to 15 per cent in 1993. There is no strong evidence to suggest that burglars had turned to other crimes or that there were widespread changes

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PROFILE OF PROPERTY CRIME OFFENDERS Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, only a small number of property crimes involved large

sums of money or very valuable objects, and very few cases involved violence. Perhaps unsurprisingly, most of the offenders brought before the courts for petty theft tended to be young, male, poorly educated (if educated at all) and poorly employed (if employed at all) in low-skilled, low-paid jobs such as labouring, domestic service and casual work. This pattern then continued into the late twentieth century, regardless of changes in the nature of low-skilled employment. All these factors informed the overall perception of criminality and reinforced conventional understandings of ‘problem populations’ in society.

It is undeniable that some people commit more serious property crimes than do others, and some people are more committed to a criminal lifestyle than others. Edwin Sutherland’s (1937) classic formulation of professional thieves demonstrates their characteristics as a specialist occupational group defined by a level of commitment to illegal economic activities as a means of making a living. This insight paved the way for much subsequent criminological thinking and empirical work on the ‘all-purpose criminal’ who makes crime a career choice and a way of life: from the ‘full-time miscreants’ in British towns in the early 1960s (Mack, 1964), and short-term groups drawn together for specific ‘project crimes’ such as the Great Train Robbery (McIntosh, 1975), to the contemporary serious crime groups (Hobbs, 1995; and see Chapter 11 of this book).

A very broad distinction can be made between professional property crime and amateur property crime. These categories reflect the different motivations, levels of temptation, degree of skill, experience and planning, and illegitimate opportunity structures. For example, Maguire (1982) has identified three types of burglar: low-level, middle-range and high-level. Low-level burglars are primarily juveniles and young adults. They lack a commitment to crime and do not usually think of themselves as ‘thieves’. They tend to be opportunists whose involvement in crime is usually short-lived. Middle-range burglars usually begin their criminal careers at a young age and move into and out of crime. Generally, they are older, more skilful and experienced than low-level burglars and search out targets across a wider geographic area. They also tend to have access to external sources to assist them in the sale of their stolen property. High-level burglars are well connected with sources of information about goods to steal and with ‘fences’ who can dispose of large quantities of stolen goods. They carefully plan their crimes and possess skills and technical expertise to overcome complex security measures.

in police recording practices. However, research has highlighted several problems. Many of the offences were solved as a result of secondary detections, especially from post-sentence visits to offenders who then admitted other offences, not from primary detections. The ‘stop and speak’ campaign was seen to conflict with the style of local policing, and officers were apprehensive that such activity could be construed as harassment and would therefore lead to increased tension on the streets. Warning residents about burglaries using a public address system was also seen as counterproductive because of its contribution to fear of crime (Stockdale and Gresham, 1995).

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Plate 8.1 Cartoon of middle-class theft. Source: © Cartoon Stock, London, www.CartoonStock.com.

Of course, a wide variety of offences and characteristics of offenders can be found across a spectrum of

property crime. To date, research on criminal careers has tended to concentrate on offenders involved in ‘common’ property crimes such as theft and vandalism (Farrington, 2002). Little research has been done on careers in other forms of property or financial crime such as consumer fraud, tax evasion, insider trading, embezzlement or money laundering. Some of these offences can be carried out only by those who hold office in a legitimate organisation or occupy an advanced position in the occupational hierarchy. Offenders may also move from one form of property crime (e.g. theft) to another (e.g. robbery), or from opportunistic offences (e.g. shoplifting) to more highly planned ones (e.g. stealing of museum pieces).

EVERYBODY DOES IT?

We should note that in between those deeply committed to a criminal lifestyle and those who occasionally steal or defraud lie a vast range of property criminals who are ‘ordinary’ or socially acceptable people. Almost two-thirds of adults interviewed in a recent study in England and Wales admitted to committing minor fraud (e.g. having paid cash in hand to evade taxes, having lied about an insurance claim, having claimed for refunds to which they are not entitled), but rarely think their behaviour is criminal. ‘The worst offenders, and the chief victims, are the middle classes; typically young, employed high earners. . . . These are crimes that are committed at the kitchen table, or in supermarkets and restaurants’ (The Times, 12 September 2003: 16). Similarly, studies in Canada suggest that shoplifting costs the retail trade over $1 million each day, and that between 1 in 12 and 1 in 20 customers admit to having stolen from shops (cited in Gabor, 1994: 73–4). Skyes and Matza’s (1957) concept of neutralisation is useful to identify the techniques that many shoplifters use to deny or deflect blame for wrongdoing away from the perpetrator. For example, shoplifters may claim that shoplifting does not really hurt the store very much (denial of the injury caused) or that a particular store deserves to be ripped off because they exploit customers (denial of the victim). Such neutralisations allow individuals to redefine shoplifting as a more acceptable form of behaviour.

Theft by employees is also extremely widespread. In Britain the British Retail Consortium calculated that

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staff theft during 1997 cost shops a total of £374 million – that is, more than double the losses caused by burglaries and eight times greater than the cost of robberies (Park, 2001). The workplace has always been a key site of property crime. Indeed, Gerald Mars (1982: 1) wrote about the ‘normal crimes of normal people in the normal circumstance of their work’. They include traders dealing in cash to evade VAT (Value Added Tax), taxi drivers who fiddle their takings, warehouse employees who overload and undercharge their friends, and shop assistants and cashiers in the retail trade ‘voiding’ a transaction or overcharging customers and pocketing the cash.

Occupational structure is a key variable in workplace crime. Mars contends that ‘fiddles’ are part of the elasticity of some occupations which emphasise individual entrepreneurship, flair, adaptability and professional autonomy, and in which group control of the workforce is low. For travelling sales representatives, journalists, lawyers, health professionals, academics and other relatively independent professionals, the conditions of work may create a criminogenic environment that opens opportunities and rationalisations for rule-bending and rule-breaking. For example, store managers can ‘customise’ their own ‘shoplifting’ by recategorising goods as old or damaged or altering stock records; journalists can fiddle their travelling expenses and slush money and rationalise these as ‘perks’ that come with the job. In contrast, in occupations that are highly structured and characterised by controlling rules, minimal autonomy and tight work-groups (e.g. in cargo-handling areas at airports, distribution centres and docks), fiddles often take place in the context of teamwork. Such practices are nothing new. Fiddling was common in the eighteenth century, when dockers often stole liquor, sugar or tea from cargoes as they unloaded them. Stolen items were then resold to grocers, publicans or ordinary people in the market (Emsley, 1996a).

THE SOCIAL DISTRIBUTION OF CRIME RISKS

Writing about the first BCS, Hough and Mayhew (1983: 15) cited the average household that could expect to be burgled ‘once every 40 years’. Since the 1980s, the BCSs show that levels of risk have increased. Each year, 1 in 20 households are burgled or suffer an attempted burglary – equivalent to over 1.6 million burglaries in 1997. What these statistics fail to show is that burglary is unevenly distributed across time and space. For example, researchers have found that time patterns of burglars are often determined by the time patterns of their victims. Residential burglary occurs disproportionately during daytime when most households are unoccupied. On the other hand, commercial burglaries occur most often during the evening hours or at weekends when the business is closed. Studies in the United States also show that residents of large cities, renters and households headed by African-Americans, Hispanics or young people are more likely than others to be burgled (Shover, 1991).

In general, the risk of property crime victimization is unevenly distributed within and between different localities and various sections of the population.

Social class

Contrary to popular belief and anxieties about crime in rural and middle-class areas, researchers in Britain

have consistently found that people living in run-down inner city areas and areas of council accommodation are particularly vulnerable to crime problems. Successive BCSs and police statistics have shown that, in general, poorer households with few home security measures in high-crime areas and areas of deprivation are most likely to experience residential burglary. In an evaluation of the incidence of crime in metropolitan inner-city areas compared with urban and suburban areas, Trickett et al. (1992) discovered that the prevalence of property offences was four times greater in the worst inner-city areas than in suburban areas and that the prevalence of offences against the person was eleven times as great. Similarly, Foster and Hope (1993) found in their analysis of BCS data that households in council estates with the highest levels of council tenure and poverty face a risk of burglary around five times greater than tenants who live in areas with less concentrated levels of council tenure and where tenants are better off. These households are also more likely to suffer a repeat burglary and are most affected by the crime(s).

Repeat victimization occurs when the same location, person, household, business or vehicle suffers more than one crime event over a specified period of time (Pease, 1998; Simmons and Dodd, 2003: 17–18). According to the National Board for Crime Prevention (1994), 4 per cent of victims experience 44 per cent of all crimes. For those who are subject to repeat victimization, it may become virtually impossible to C

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differentiate the impact of discrete crimes from the generally poor quality of life. Those living in the inner city, council estates and areas of high physical disorder are also more likely than average to experience a second burglary within the year. In response, there is evidence to suggest that uninsured small businesses and young men living in deprived, high-crime areas are more likely to have purchased stolen goods as a means of minimising their losses (Sutton, 1998).

A similar pattern has emerged from local studies, indicating not only the problem of repeat victimization but also the ‘lived reality’ of people at risk. By focusing on particular localities these surveys (notably in Islington (London), Merseyside, Edinburgh and Rochdale) highlighted the higher levels of crime prevailing in socially deprived areas and the disproportionate victimization of women, of ethnic minority groups and of the poor (Crawford et al., 1990; Kinsey, 1984; Mooney, 1993; Forrester et al., 1988). Significantly, such high levels of social deprivation and crime victimization are also co-terminous with higher levels of poor health (see Chapter 12).

Ethnicity

According to the BCSs, ethnic minority groups (especially Pakistanis and Bangladeshis) are more at risk than whites of household crimes. It is of course extremely difficult to isolate ethnicity as a discrete variable in explaining patterns of victimization. Socioeconomic factors and wider processes of racialisation may be at work here, if we take into account the fact that ethnic minority households are more likely than white households to experience poverty (that is, with incomes below half the national average) and to live in socially disadvantaged areas (Modood and Berthoud, 1997). Ethnic minority ethnic groups are also routinely subject to racial violence and harassment that range from murder, damage to property (including racist graffiti), to verbal and other forms of abuse of an isolated or persistent nature (see Chapter 10).

Age

Official statistics and self-report studies indicate the prevalence of property crime in young people’s everyday life. Crime statistics have consistently found the ‘typical offender’ to be male (over 80 per cent of offenders known to the authorities) and young (almost half are under the age of 21). Similarly, according to a recent Youth Lifestyles Survey (Flood-Page et al., 2000), almost 1 in 5 young people admitted committing at least one offence in the previous twelve months, and nearly three-quarters of all offences committed were property offences or fraud. However, any focus on young people as the perpetrators of crime should not be allowed to obscure or divert our attention away from the worryingly high levels of victimisation that young people suffer from their peers and adults. The BCSs have repeatedly shown that young people experience relatively more serious problems as victims of crime irrespective of class, gender or place (see Chapter 7). Few of these experiences are reported to the police, however, and youth victimization (as opposed to youth offending) remains low on the priority lists of the police and politicians.

Geography

Survey data has consistently highlighted the spatial concentration of the incidence of crime victimization –

for example, in urban areas (as opposed to rural areas) and in the poorest ‘striving areas’ (as opposed to the wealthiest ‘thriving areas’).

It is not just the cities that have become synonymous with the ‘crime problem’. Geographical research on crime and the use of computer-generated analyses of patterns of reported crime in different local police force areas (e.g. Crime Pattern Analysis) have pointed to particular concentrations of so-called ‘hotspots’ of crime. Research evidence in the United States and Britain suggests that even high-crime areas have their relatively safe micro-locations as well as their specific ‘trouble-spot’ areas (Sherman, 1995; Hope, 1985; Hirschfield et al., 1995).

Writing from a different perspective, Ian Taylor (1997, 1999) highlights the shifting ‘urban fortunes’ behind the massive increase in crime in specific localities and regions from the late 1980s to early 1990s. For Taylor, the levels of crime in different localities are related to their varied capacities for responding to global economic competition, deindustrialisation and post-industrial restructuring. For example, industrial areas C

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such as South Yorkshire which suffered the most recent loss of what was locally assumed to have been a secure labour market experienced the highest rates of increase in crime. On the other hand, Greater Manchester, ‘the “youth capital” of the North of England with one of the largest post-Fordist labour markets in the North’, had the smallest increases in property crime and crime in general (I. Taylor, 1999: 134). Yet such ‘new leisure zones’ and their thriving alcohol-oriented nighttime economy have other well-documented problems of violence and disorder (Hobbs et al., 2000; and see Chapter 12 of this book).

CONTROLLING PROPERTY CRIME Our ideas about property crime (what form does it take?) and property crime offenders (who are they?)

have also shaped our responses to the problem. ‘Common’ property offences such as petty theft, burglary and forgery were among the 200 or so offences punishable by death under the ‘Bloody Code’ in the eighteenth century. For example, the shoplifting of goods worth five shillings was a capital offence, as was stealing sheep or cattle. Transportation to penal colonies and prison were also used to punish a range of offenders. Indeed, prisons of different varieties have since emerged to occupy a central role in the criminal justice system even though their precise function and effectiveness are still subject to intense political and academic debate (see Chapter 16). Then as now, it was the ‘quantity’ rather than ‘quality’ of the offences that most concerned the public, legislators, the police and commentators on crime alike. The main exception was the periodic panic about violent street robberies (also known as ‘garotting’, or ‘mugging’ in the contemporary context) that prompted the revival of whipping for adults in the 1860s (Rawlings, 1999: 100, n. 1). Legislation and its enforcement were slow in keeping pace with the opportunities for large-scale theft, fraud and embezzlement provided by the expansion and development of the business and financial world during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (as they still are) (Robb, 1992; and see Chapter 11 of this book).

As Steven Box (1983) and others have indicated, there is considerable inconsistency in the way in which the criminal justice system perceives and treats ‘the crimes of the powerless’ as opposed to ‘the crimes of the powerful’ – business offenders. For example, if one measures the significance of property offences in terms of the value stolen, rather than the quantity of incidents, fraud has far greater importance than other categories. As Mike Levi (1993) points out, in April 1992 the Frauds Divisions of the Crown Prosecution Service were supervising cases involving nearly £4 billion. By contrast, the combined costs of the vast number of vehicle offences and burglaries for 1990 were estimated by the Association of British Insurers at under £1.3 billion.

The use of criminal justice response against low-level property crime offenders has particular consequences for those who are already economically and socially marginalised. Studies have shown that the rise in women’s prosecutions from the 1980s onwards can be explained by a rise in specific areas, all related to continuing and worsening levels of female poverty (Carlen, 1988, 1998; Pantazis, 1999; and see Chapter 14 of this book). Similarly, the steep increases in the numbers of women received into prisons in the 1990s have been linked to the increased numbers of women in the categories of economic and social deprivation who have been traditionally more vulnerable to imprisonment (Carlen, 1998: 56).

BOX 8.2 KEY DEVELOPMENTS IN THE LAW AND PUNISHMENT OF PROPERTY CRIME IN BRITAIN 1808 Repeal of capital punishment for pickpockets 1820 Repeal of capital punishment for stealing in shops 1861 and 1916 Larceny Acts cover many types of stealing and provide for greater or

lesser penalties depending on the nature of the property stolen, the place, the relationship between the thief and owner.

1968 and 1978 Theft Acts codify all offences against property and create a simplified definition of theft covering all types of stealing, embezzlement and fraud. The maximum sentence for theft is 10 years’ imprisonment, 14 years for burglary and life imprisonment for robbery.

1971 Criminal Damage Act – maximum punishment for damage to property is 10 years’ imprisonment, life imprisonment for arson.

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OTHER FORMS OF PROPERTY CRIME So far we have concentrated on the more conventional forms of crime against property in everyday life.

There are of course other forms of property crime with equally, if not more, harmful impact on individuals and communities alike.

Theft and illegal export of cultural property

The theft of cultural property is flourishing and now constitutes a major form of transnational crime.

Cultural property can be defined as movable or immovable property of great importance to the cultural heritage of every people. It can include monuments such as architectural works, sculptures, paintings, manuscripts, structures of an archaeological nature, cave dwellings, and sites that are significant from the historical, aesthetic, ethnological or anthropological points of view. Although looting of art treasures has long been a feature of warfare, illegal excavation and trade in stolen art and antiquities have been spurred by increasing pressure from the international art market. Crimes against cultural property have the potential for robbing entire cultures and nations of their cultural heritage (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation 1997). In African countries such as Mali, the purchase for illegal export of cultural objects and looting of archaeological sites has increased rapidly since the 1970s. Objects tend to acquire higher prices the further they travel from ‘home’. Art treasures, human remains, religious relics and sacred objects, furniture, and cultural objects in Nigeria, South Africa, Asia, Latin America, former Soviet-bloc countries and, to some extent, Western European countries such as Italy and Britain have been targeted in recent years (Box 8.3). Archaeological sites in the United States have also been looted and vandalised in the hunt for the best ‘marketable’ Native American artefacts.

The international trade in stolen, smuggled and looted art is estimated to be worth US$4.5–6 billion dollars per year (New York Times, 20 November 1995). Elaborate methods of distributing stolen art are often used to conceal the origin of the objects; as a result, it can take years to resolve disputes over the ownership of such art. For example, the Lydian Hoard, a collection of ancient treasures looted in Turkey, was purchased by New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art in the 1960s. It took the Turkish government almost twenty years to trace the whereabouts of the objects and another six years of legal action before the museum finally agreed to repatriate the objects. The illicit art market is populated by a mix of criminal organisations, individual thieves, ‘fences’ who act as the middle person, and unscrupulous collectors as well as legitimate traders such as antique dealers and institutions, including reputable auction houses (Conklin, 1994). This is yet another example of the symbiosis between legitimate and criminal activity, just like the cross-over activities in the entertainment and gambling industries, the arms trade and many other areas (see Chapter 11).

BOX 8.3 LOOTING AROUND THE WORLD The British Parliamentary Report on Cultural Property: Return and Illicit Trade

(2000) highlights the massive scale and impact of illicit excavations around the world. For example, the looting of the Early Bronze Age cemeteries of the Cycladic Islands in the Aegean may have resulted in the loss of 85 per cent of the relevant archaeological contents, and over 1,000 pieces of pottery worth about US$10 million are smuggled out of the Mayan region of Central America every month. Looting of sites in Italy is also a serious problem. A 1998 raid on a villa in Sicily seized some 30,000 Phoenician, Greek and Roman antiquities that were valued at US$20 million. The illegal trade, export and smuggling of Egyptian antiquities for sale abroad are known to cause substantial and irrevocable damage to Egypt’s cultural heritage. The report suggests that England is

1991 Criminal Justice Act reduces the maximum sentence for theft from 10 to 7 years’ imprisonment.

1997 Crime (Sentences) Act increases prison sentences for certain categories of offenders, including a minimum of three years for a third offence of domestic burglary.

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Theft of intellectual property

Theft of intangible property, such as copyright infringement, counterfeiting of trademarks and making patented products, exists at different levels, from the individual computer owners who illegally copy video games or music at home (see Chapter 13) to the organised groups that engage in large-scale counterfeiting and smuggling.

Counterfeiting is a major activity for professional criminals in Britain, and has links globally, involving production of goods or currency and then distribution. Generally low risks and high profit margins make counterfeiting a very lucrative activity. Fake designer label clothing and other luxury items, counterfeit computer software and large-scale illegal reproduction of popular audio and video tapes are well-known examples. More everyday items such as soap powder, toys, shampoos, cleaning products and even tea bags have been subject to counterfeit and have resulted in injury (Croall, 1997). Currency counterfeiting faces the problem that daily use of money makes fake versions harder to pass, but this does not mean that such counterfeit circulation is uncommon. Indeed, the introduction of the euro across much of Europe in 2002 was predicted to be a boost to professional counterfeiters as this is a currency with which there is no history of familiarity and which is conceived and designed to be used in transactions across borders.

So who suffers and who benefits from the global trade in counterfeit goods? The answer is not always so clear-cut. Legitimate manufacturers and consumers (especially the poorer consumers who buy substandard or even dangerous counterfeit goods) are generally considered to be the main victims. In Nigeria, shortages of drugs and other technologies in the medical care system have led to the sale of ‘counterfeit, substandard and otherwise dangerous substances’, accounting for as much as 60–70 per cent of all drugs, and causing many instances of drug poisoning and death (Alubo, 1994: 97–8; and see Chapter 12 of this book). On the other hand, the counterfeiting industry arguably enables those who cannot afford the full prices to obtain similar consumer products and provides income for the unemployed, especially workers in developing nations.

Biopiracy

Finally, the question of ‘who is the offender?’ becomes even more contentious when applied to other

non-conventional forms of property. For instance, patent law has been extended in recent years in such a way as to allow the ownership of DNA, cell lines and other biological materials. It has become possible for multinational corporations to ‘own’ DNA sequences and modified genes of animals and plants and to make significant profits through royalty charges for their use. Supporters of patent law point out that weak intellectual property regimes could foreclose opportunities for biotechnology research and product development. High research costs can drive up the price of the end products, many of which are important for public health needs. Critics, however, argue that the patenting of medicines, seeds, plants and – potentially – higher life forms by multinational corporations amounts to biopiracy and can have particularly serious consequences for the developing countries.

‘Biopiracy’ is a term that has been given to the practices of some companies that have asserted the right of ownership over genetic materials taken from living organisms (Manning, 2000). For example, the Africa Group in the World Trade Organisation has highlighted the serious implications that patents on seeds of staple food crops would have on the rights of indigenous communities to food security. It proposed in 1999, and again in 2001, that the mandated review of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights should make clear that plants, animals and micro-organisms and their parts, and all living processes, cannot be patented. To some extent, these issues are related to the over-exploitation of the earth and its resources and have prompted some criminologists to reappraise more traditional notions of crimes and injurious behaviours and to examine the role that corporations and governments play in creating ‘green crimes’ (see Chapter 17).

one of the largest markets for illicitly traded property. Studies of antiquities from celebrated private collections in public exhibitions in Britain and North America during the 1990s, and the sale of antiquities in the London antiquities market suggest that an alarmingly high percentage of these objects had no provenance and history.

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NEW HORIZONS IN UNDERSTANDING PROPERTY CRIME As Part 2 of this book shows, criminological explanations of why individuals commit property crime span

a variety of perspectives from the dispositions of the individual offender to the social conditions associated with crime. For some offenders, survival and subsistence may well be the primary motivations for committing property crime. Other criminologists have argued that crimes such as shoplifting have to be understood in the broader context of the creation of needs, the structuring of consumption and the commodification of desire under late capitalism. Yet these societal processes alone cannot explain the meaning or the attractions of criminality.

Cultural criminologists (see Chapter 5) argue that criminology has traditionally underestimated the attractions in doing wrong or living ‘on the edge’. The concept of ‘edgework’ was first put forward by the sociologist Stephen Lyng (1990; Lyng and Snow, 1986) in his analysis of voluntary risk-taking. He argues that ‘edgework’ can be understood as ‘a type of experiential anarchy in which the individual moves beyond the realm of established social patterns to the very fringes of ordered reality’ (Lyng, 1990: 882). Edgework activities that involve an observable threat to one’s physical or mental well-being can be best illustrated by dangerous sports (such as skydiving, hang-gliding and rock-climbing) or by dangerous occupations (such as fire-fighting, combat soldiering, movie stunt work). More generally, edgework can also take the form of excessive drug use (which involves negotiating the boundary between sanity and insanity) or marathon running (which tests the limits of body). Lyng (1990: 863) argues that voluntary risk-taking provides ‘a heightened sense of self and a feeling of omnipotence’ for those who succeed in getting as close as possible to the edge without ‘going over it’.

These ideas have been further developed by cultural criminologists such as Jeff Ferrell and Jack Katz. Katz (1988: 54) suggests that shoplifting can be understood as a version of a ‘thrilling and sensually gratifying game’. It can be rewarding beyond the monetary gains – for example, providing the feelings of accomplishment when a theft is successful. Katz found that expressive motivations were highly prevalent in his interview data obtained from well-off college student shoplifters. Studies also found that burglars frequently cited excitement as part of their motivation, while others targeted occupied homes because such burglaries provide an ‘illicit adventure’ (cited in Mawby, 2001: 69).

Similarly, if we turn to the world of business, bank fraud, price-fixing or manipulating the stock market, all contain elements of the thrills and spills of risk-taking common to other aspects of social life. As Stan Cohen (1973b: 622) reminds us, ‘some of our most cherished social values – individualism, masculinity, competitiveness – are the same ones that generate crime’. Indeed, it is the excitement and a sense of machismo in beating the competition in our ‘enterprise’ culture that arguably induces some managers and young city professionals to perform ‘dirty deeds’ in covert business activities – for example, to act as spies, phone-tappers, computer hackers, safe-breakers, forgers and saboteurs (Punch, 2000).

Property crime also has to be understood within the context of the expansion of the hidden economy and increased blurring of boundaries between employment and unemployment and between legal and illegal work. In an increasingly polarised society in which only 40 per cent of the population have secure employment, while the others are split between those in insecure employment (30 per cent) and a marginalised underclass of the unemployed (30 per cent) (Hutton, 1995), the gap between benefit entitlements and realistic standards of living in a consumer-oriented society is widening. Some commentators have argued that those young people who are without the protection of employment, family and welfare, or are trapped in the ‘magic roundabout’ of different training and enterprise schemes, are most likely to adopt one of the transient lifestyles or alternative ‘careers’ thrown up by local hidden economies, including ‘fencing’ stolen goods, ‘hustling’, unlicensed street trading, or acting as ‘lookouts’ or ‘touts’ (Carlen, 1996; Craine, 1997). Perhaps more significantly, many of these illegal activities are not considered as crime, just ‘ordinary work’ (Foster, 1990: 165; Taylor and Jamieson, 1997). All this points to the need to understand crime as a ‘normal’ rather than an ‘exceptional’ social phenomenon. Although property crime has been a constant focus of public and political attention, this chapter suggests that there is no singular ‘crime problem’ as such. Instead, there is a wide spectrum of illicit behaviour, misconduct, troubling and alarming events that are widespread and constantly occurring, and a variety of ways of conceiving of and thinking about everyday property crime.

SUMMARY C

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1. Official statistics and victim surveys indicate the prevalence of various types of property crime over time, among different social groups and across societies.

2. This is evident in the vast range of illegal activities committed by the general public, the hidden and petty-criminal economies of everyday survival, the crimes committed by respectable people in the normal circumstances of their everyday jobs and by those who simply get a buzz out of leading life ‘on the edge’.

3. While the risks of victimization and the impact of property crime remain highly differentiated and unevenly distributed, research studies have generally pointed to the higher levels of property crime prevailing in socially deprived areas and the disproportionate victimization of the poor, of young people and of minority ethnic groups.

4. Against a background of social change and technological advances, the range of property crime activities has broadened significantly or even developed into transnational businesses. New or existing forms of property crime can also be carried out more extensively, more quickly, more efficiently and with greater ease of concealment.

5. In addition to crimes that take place in the street or are directed at households, property crime also includes theft and illegal export of cultural property and theft of intellectual property. A critical study of these forms of crime requires reappraisal of more traditional notions of offending, harmful behaviour and property.

CRITICAL THINKING QUESTIONS

1. What evidence is there to suggest that many crimes against property are committed by socially acceptable people in their everyday life?

2. What are the limitations of the official picture of property crime? 3. How might criminological research advance our understanding of previously

hidden forms of property crime around the world? FURTHER STUDY

Emsley, C. (1996) Crime and Society in England 1750–1900, London: Longman. An accessible introduction

to the history of the crime problem, perceptions of criminality and changes in the courts, the police and the system of punishment.

Mawby, R. (2001) Burglary, Cullompton, Devon: Willan. A useful overview of the key aspects of the problem of burglary and some of the recent developments and research studies in policy responses.

Newman, G. (ed.) (1999) Global Report on Crime and Justice, New York: Oxford University Press. A comprehensive text from the United Nations on crime, criminal justice and international crime victim surveys.

Shover, Neal (1996) Great Pretenders: Pursuits and Games of Persistent Thieves, Boulder, CO: Westview Press. A fascinating book on the criminal pathways and decision-making of offenders based on original studies and autobiographies of persistent thieves in the USA.

MORE INFORMATION

The Home Office: Research Development Statistics – Publications http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/bcs.html The National British Crime Survey provides up-to-date annual information on different types of crime, including property crime, which may or may not be reported to and recorded by the police. Full reports and summaries of BCS findings and many other research studies funded by the Home Office can be found here.

The International Crime Victim Surveys http://www.unicri.it/icvs/ Information, publications and statistics on international crime victim surveys are available at this site. C

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CHAPTER 9 Crime and Sexuality

INTRODUCTION In the grand sweep of crime, sex offences are officially not as common as many other offences. The Home

Office recorded 36,690 for the year ending September 1998, 37,492 for the year ending 1999 (around 10 per cent of violent crime) – but they do seem to be on the increase, they are severely under-reported, and they do provoke a great deal of anxiety and concern. For reasons discussed in Chapter 2, being precise about criminal statistics is very difficult. There is always a large hidden figure, but in the case of sex offences such problems may be magnified because many victims do not wish to report the crimes at all – finding the glare of public recognition and scrutiny too traumatic. In some cases – often involving under-age offences – they may not even be aware that a crime has been committed. Further, even when a crime is reported, getting a conviction may be difficult: in 1989, 3,305 recorded cases of rape resulted in only 613 cautions or conviction (Sampson, 1994). Often, for instance, the women’s accusations in a rape case may not be taken seriously. As the late Sue Lees (1996a: x–xi) argued, from her extensive analysis of the police, courts and victims in London:

[I]t is simply inconceivable that the vast majority of women who report rape to the police are lying. Moreover, there is evidence that those women who do report are merely the tip of the iceberg, and yet this tip is further decimated as the criminal justice system runs its course.

BOX 9.1 TWO SOCIAL THEORIES OF SEXUALITY Gagnon and Simon’s Sexual Conduct (1973) is one of the landmark texts in the

sociology of sexuality and is seen as the foundational text of what is now commonly known as the ‘social constructionist’ approach to sexuality. (A new edition is being planned.) Gagnon and Simon claim that there is no one, unified pattern of sexuality; instead, there are ‘many ways to become, to be, to act, to feel sexual. There is no one human sexuality, but rather a wide variety of sexualities’ (Gagnon, 1977, preface).

Three of their main themes which will help us think about sexuality and crime, are as follows:

Beware of the biological: it claims too much. Sex crimes are rarely a matter of sex being a simple biological release. In contrast to classic ways of thinking about sexuality as biological, bodily and ‘natural’ – as essentially given – Gagnon and Simon aimed to show the ways in which human sexualities are always organised through economic, religious, political, familial and social conditions; any analysis that does not recognise this must be seriously flawed. Sexuality, for humans, is never just a free floating desire. It is always grounded in wider material and cultural forces.

KEY ISSUES What are the major patterns of crimes linked to sex? How do they link to gender? Why do they provoke such hysteria? How are sex crimes changing? What can be done about them?

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