Armed Robbers In Action: Stickups and Street Culture

2 Deciding to Commit an Armed Robbery

Deciding to Commit an Armed Robbery Official statistics tell us that arrested armed robbers are disproportionately young, poor, black, and male. It is tempting to read into such characteristics the mechanisms that drive offenders to commit stickups. After all, blacks who are young and poor have limited social and economic opportunities compared to older, more affluent whites. And it is part of our accepted wisdom that males are more violent and aggressive than females. But demography is not destiny. Many young, poor blacks never resort to any type of crime, let alone armed robbery. Conversely, some females regularly engage in predatory criminal violence. Demographic characteristics may identify a segment of the population as more likely than others to commit stickups, but such characteristics are not, and cannot be, causal agents. At most, they play an indirect role in facilitating such crimes by shaping the interactional environment within which potential offenders assess their current circumstances and prospects. The direct cause of armed robbery is a perceptual process through which the offense comes to be seen as a means of meeting an immediate need, that is, through which a motive for the crime is formed. As Katz (1988:4) observes, demography notwithstanding, "something causally essential happens in the very moments in which a crime is committed. The assailant must sense, there and then, a distinctive constraint or 32 DECIDING TO COMMIT AN ARMED ROBBERY 33 seductive appeal that [was not sensed] a little while before in a substantially similar place." What are the causally essential constraints or appeals that underpin the decision to commit an armed robbery? That is the question to which the present chapter is devoted. Our goal is to understand the process whereby would-be armed robbers move from an unmotivated state to one in which they are determined to carry out a stickup. With few exceptions, the decision to commit an armed robbery arises in the face of what offenders perceive to be a pressing need for cash (Conklin 1972; Gabor et al. 1987). Eighty of the eighty-one offenders in our sample who spoke directly to the issue of motivation said that they did stickups primarily because they needed money. Being broke [gets me to thinking about doing an armed robbery] . .. cause being broke, man, you don't feel good. You ain't got nothing in your pocket, so you want to take something out of someone else's pocket. (Bill Williams—No. 78) These offenders were not attempting to accumulate the capital necessary to achieve a long-range goal. They regarded money as the means to satisfy an immediate need. Armed robbery for them was a matter of day-to-day survival. [The idea of committing an armed robbery] comes into your mind when your pockets are low; it speaks very loudly when you need things and you are not able to get what you need. It's not a want, it's things that you need, basic things that if you don't have the money, you have the artillery to go and get it. That's the first thing on my mind; concentrate on how I can get some more money. (Black—No. jy) [Armed robbery] was a big joke more or less when I was younger. It ain't no joke now. It's survival. That's how I look at it now. (James Minor—No. 14) Many of the offenders lurched from one financial crisis to the next. The frequency with which they committed armed robberies was governed largely by the amount of money in their 34 CHAPTER 2 pockets. Most appeared to give little thought to offending until they found themselves unable to meet current expenses. [I commit an armed robbery] about every few months. There's no set pattern, but I guess it's really based on the need. If there is a period of time where there is no need of money . . . then it's not necessary to go out and rob. It's not like I do [stickups] for fun. (Slick Going—No. 04) I can be sitting there, [not thinking about doing an armed robbery], and I might want to go somewhere and I might be broke. I only work part-time; so when I get paid and I give my people some money for staying with them, I'm [soon] broke again. So I might be sitting there and the thought might occur, "Well...