Burglars On The Job: Streetlife and Residential Break-ins

Chapter 2 Deciding to Commit a Burglary

Deciding to Commit a Burglary THE DEMOGRAPHIC CHARACTERISTICS of residential burglars have been well documented. As Shover (1991) has observed, such offenders are, among other things, disproportionately young, male, and poor. These characteristics serve to identify a segment of the population more prone than others to resort to breaking in to dwellings, but they offer little insight into the actual causes of residential burglary. Many poor, young males, after all, never commit any sort of serious offense , let alone a burglary. And even those who carry out such crimes are not offending most of the time. This is not, by and large, a continually motivated group of criminals,- the motivation for them to offend is closely tied to their assessment of current circumstances and prospects. The direct cause of residential burglary 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. (35) Chapter 2 Walker (i984:viii) has pointed out that, in order to develop a convincing explanation for criminal behavior, we must begin by "distinguishing the states of mind in which offenders commit , or contemplate the commission of, their offenses." Similarly , Katz (1988:4), arguing for increased research into what he calls the foreground of criminality, has noted that all of the demographic information on criminals in the world cannot answer the following question: "Why are people who were not determined to commit a crime one moment determined to do so the next?" This is the question to which the present chapter is addressed. The aim is to explore the extent to which the decision to commit a residential burglary is the result of a process of careful calculation and deliberation. hi the overwhelming majority of cases, the decision to commit a residential burglary arises in the face of what offenders perceive to be a pressing need for cash. Previous research consistently has shown this to be so (Bennett and Wright, 1984; Cromwell et al., 1991) and the results of the present study bear out this point. More than nine out of ten of the offenders in our sample—95 of 102,—reported that they broke into dwellings primarily when they needed money. Well, it's like, the way it clicks into your head is like, you'll be thinking about something and, you know, it's a problem. Then it, like, all relates. "Hey, I need some money! Then how am I going to get money? Well, how do you know how to get money quick and easy?" Then there it is. Next thing you know, you are watching [a house] or calling to see if [the occupants] are home. (Wild Will—No. 010) Usually when I get in my car and drive around I'm thinking, I don't have any money, so what is my means for gettin' money? All of a sudden I'll just take a glance and say, "There it is! There's the house" ... Then I get this feelin', that right moment, I'm movin' then. (Larry William—No. 017) These offenders were not motivated by a desire for money for its own sake. By and large, they were not accumulating the (36) Deciding to Commit a Burglary capital needed to achieve a long-range goal. Rather, they regarded money as providing them with the means to solve an immediate problem. In their view, burglary was a matter of day-to-day survival. I didn't have the luxury of laying back in no damn pinstriped [suit]. I'm poor and I'm raggedy and I need some food and I need some shoes... So I got to have some money some kind of way. If it's got to be the wrong way, then so be it. (Mark Smith—No. 030) When I first started out, when I was younger, [burglary] was excitement or a high. But now it's to get by, you know, to survive. I don't ask my father for anything. My mother is not able to help. (Larry Harris—No. 035) Given this view, it is unsurprising that the frequency with which the offenders committed burglaries was governed largely by the amount of money in their pockets. Many of them would not offend so long as they had sufficient cash to meet current expenses. Usually what I'll do is a burglary, maybe...