CRIM 1650 NOTES [KAPPELER]

The Social Construction of Crime Myths

- Two perspectives explain the existence of a social problem

1) Individuals who have vested interests in an issue bring the problem to public’s attention characterized as

“claims-makers”, “moral entrepreneurs”, etc advocate formal social policy to address the new problem,

which they feel is unique, real, and grave

2) Perspective by those who study the construction of social problems problems constructed from collective

definitions rather than individual views and perceptions

- Myth: traditional story with a historical basis that explains some practice, belief, or event

often reveal underlying ideals, and tell us more about our social and cultural values than they do

about any particular circumstance

more often instruct us on how to integrate an event into our belief system

- Fiction in crime myth comes not from fabrication of events, but from the transformation and distortion of those

events into social and political problems

- Events gain their persuasiveness and motivating power from their ‘larger than life’ quality

- Power of crime myths come from their seemingly natural explanations of crime

The Functions of Crime Myths

- Crime myths are powerful constructions of reality because they speak to our personal values and beliefs, and

are steeped in rich symbolism which reinforces those values and beliefs

- Provide us with a conceptual framework from which to identify certain social issues as crime related, to develop

our personal opinions on issues of justice, and to apply ready-made solutions to social problems

Catalog Social Actors

- Crime myths catalog social actors into artificial distinctions between law-abiding citizens, criminals, crime fights,

and victims

- Myths condemn others and reinforce self-perception through contrast

Reinforce Existing Social Arrangements

- Once a crime myth has been generated and accepted by the public, it provides the foundation to generate other

myths of crime and justice

- This can prevent defining issues accurately, exploring new solutions, or finding alternatives to existing, socially

constructed labels and crime control practices

- Crime myths fill gaps in knowledge and provide answers to questions social science either cannot answer or has

failed to address

- Myth imperatively guides action and establishes patterns of behaviour

Reconcile Contradictions

- Myths are conceptual schemes that assist us in interpreting reality and organizing our thoughts and beliefs

about reality

- EXAMPLE: prisons do not rehabilitate offenders, and released inmates often commit additional crimes.

However, our solution to crime is to enhance punishment and incarcerate people more

Create Collective Belief System

- Broad social myths make our constrictions of criminal justice and response to crime seem reasonable and

unchallengeable

- Crime myths tell us who we are by constructing criminals; they tell us what we value; and they tell us what we

should do about any challenges in social arrangements

POWERFUL MYTHMAKERS

- The mass media, government, and reform groups select our crime problems for us and focus our attention on

social issues

- The largest and most powerful mythmakers are the mass media

Media as a Mythmaker

- modern mass communication system has enabled unprecedented numbers of myths to spread

- technology has enhanced our ability to generate, refine, distribute, and reinforce myths

- increased ability to project myths and the tendency to localize them have been accompanied by a shrinking

number of people who control the means and mediums of myth production

- the selection of crime problems is often limited to the most bizarre problem a journalist or investigator can

uncover

- by promoting unique and fascinating issues, the media insures marketability and success

- whenever examples substitute for definitions, there is a risk that our understanding of the problem will be

distorted

- Using the worst case to characterize a social problem encourages us to view that case as typical and to think

about the problem in extreme terms

- Yellow Journalism: practice of using sensational stories to attract reader and increase profit

- We problematize events, turning particular criminal acts into examples of types of crimes

- EXAMPLE: Central Park Jogger attackers were “wilding”

Government as Mythmaker

- The government has a vested interest in maintaining the existing social definition of crime and extending this

definition to groups and behaviours that are perceived to be a threat to the existing social order

- Public service announcements, controlled press briefings, and the release of research reports are a few

examples of how the government can shape the content of messages

- EXAMPLE: government collects and disseminates information on number of murders and assaults committed, as

well as the number of police officers killed in the line of duty on an annual basis. It does not however collect and

dissimilate information on number of citizens killed or brutalized by police each year

- Government events provide the media with material for their stories the directed information helps refocus

media attention on a topic the government wants to emphasize, such as drug prohibition

- Governmental officials, criminal justice practitioners, and politicians have a distinct advantage over researchers

and scholars one advances ideology, while the other attempts to find reason/cure

- The politicalization of social problems into crime myths have a direct effect on the public’s perception of crime

issues

- Fear about domestic terrorism and random violence prompted calls for fever restrictions on government

surveillance

- After the 9/11 attacks, attorney general for George Bush stated there was a direct link between terrorism and

drug use, without providing any real evidence

Merging Mythmakers

- During the latter part of the 1980’s, television crime programs blended entertainment and government

sponsored messages, using government officials, well-known relatives of crime victims, and law enforcement

officers to inform the public about crime

- The programs encouraged viewers to report crime and criminals in exchange for monetary awards

- These programs filled the uncomfortable void of not having answers by reconstructing the event through the

perspective of law enforcement officials (use of government officials gave impression of official credibility)

- Viewers are presented a distorted view of the world as more dangerous than it really is

- Media depictions of crime and justice in the united states have consequences beyond individual miscarriages of

justice. They represent a new form of knowledge construction where crime and the response to it is a hybrid

product of governmental ideology and media distortion

CREATING CRIME MYTHS

- Crime myths are created and given power because of several important and interrelated features:

1) Every media story that is written or broadcast is done so at expense of another story if the media give a

disproportionate amount of attention to crime, they have a limited space for other issues

2) Media stories have a social context that includes previous constructions about the nature of social reality

humans want to see the world as orderly, predictable, and safe

3) Crime myths incorporate some measure of social or economic conditions

4) In order for a myth to develop to the point where it becomes more than a social concert, it must be properly

packaged and marketed

Exaggeration

- Requirement for myth production is that crime must be reported to occur in “epidemic” proportions

- Exaggerating the magnitude of the problem sustains public attention long enough for fear to take hold

- Organization of these presentations can create the image of a crime problem when they are taken out of their

geographical, temporal, or social contexts

- EXAMPLE: Halloween candy being poisoned or sharp objects being inserted in them NEWSPAPER STORY

Media Images

- Crime-related television programs have been estimated to account for about one-third of all television shows

- The least committed crimes such as murder and assault, appear most frequently than crimes committed often

- Violent crimes portrayed as caused by greed/avoid detection rather than passion accompanying arguments

- The use of illegal police tactics is seemingly sanctioned

- Police nearly always capture the ‘bad guys’ in violent confrontations

- Depictions of crime in the news are not reflective of either the rate of crime generally, the proportion of crime

which is violent, the proportion of crime committed by people of colour, or the proportion of crime committed

by youth

- Local tv news contributes to the construction of blacks and Hispanics as social threats

- People who watched more television were more fearful of crime and that they tended to support politicians and

policies directed at the types of crimes shown on television programs

- *would the public continue to support death penalty if media only reported executions of mentally disabled

youth juvenile offenders?*

Statistics

- Misuse of statistical information can range from limiting public access to information to deliberate attempts to

mislead the public by presenting false information or using deceptive formats to present information

- Statistics often mislead the public when they are stripped from their original context, are collected with political

intent, or inferences are made between research studies

- When causally linked with other social problems, the perception of an epidemic is insured

CHARACTERIZATION OF CRIME MYTHS

- Momentum is achieved if the crime problem has traits that either instill fear or threaten the vast majority of

society in some appreciable way

- There must be “virtuous” heroes, “innocent” victims, and “evil” villains who pose a clear and certain threat to

the audience

Theme of Difference

- Crime myths are often build around unpopular groups in society vulnerable if distinguishable from dominant

social group

- Distinctions are often race, colour, national origin, religious beliefs, political views, or even sexual preferences

- Fear of minorities, foreigners, and differences in cultural or religious values has led to creation of myths of

organized crime

Theme of Innocence

- Helpless or innocent victims must be depicted as suffering the brunt of the newly found social evil

- Women, children, law enforcement officers, or unwitting business people are often used as virtuous victims

- Casting victims as innocents authorizes the implementation of stiff criminal sanctions against the deviants,

accompanied by feelings of moral superiority and satisfaction of retribution

Theme of Threatened Values

- Myths of crime and justice become more powerful when blended with threats to religious beliefs, traditional

family, or middle-class values

- Idea that “normal” life might break down adds to the value of a crime myth

- Similar to moral panics they clarify the moral boundaries of society and demonstrate limits to how much

diversity will be tolerated

- Answer is usually stronger social controls: more laws, longer sentences, more police, more prison cells, etc

- The safe, convenient myth points to the different ones as the source of a problem, so we do not have to change

our lifestyle or take responsibility for the problem

- Alternative would be to expose the myth organized crime is integral part of society, it could not exist if the

citizenry did not wish to have ready access to drugs, pornography, prostitution, gambling, or stolen goods

- Uncovering the myth of crime and vice carries no bureaucratic rewards for law enforcement or government; it

would offend people and end law enforcement and political careers

SELECTION AND DISSEMINATION OF MYTHS

- Mythmakers do not simply uncover and transmit information; they structure reality by selecting and

characterizing events – thereby cultivating images of crime

Influence of Reporters and Editors

- Collection of crime events for public presentation is often shaped by reporters’ perceptions

- Accounts are rarely the product of actual observation

- Frequently, the wrong questions are asked, essential questions are omitted, and sensationalism is focus

- Editorial constraints often include the time available to present a story, the page space available, and

marketability of the final product decisions not always made in conjunction with advice of original observer

Media Themes

- Procedure to select news requires that an incident be stripped of the actual context of its occurrence so that it

may be relocated in a new, symbolic context: the news theme

- Something becomes a “serious type of crime” on the basis of what is going on inside newsroom, not out

Public’s Selective Retention

- Many will only remember the bizarre, hideous, or dramatic part of a communication to the exclusion of other

information

- While media focus on crime myth is often short-lived, the visceral images may linger with audience longer

Techniques of Myth Construction

- Propaganda: technique for influencing social action based on intentional distortions and manipulation of

communications

- Common techniques employed by the media, government officials, and interest groups include:

1) Creating criminal stereotypes presenting crime as a unidimensional and nonchanging event. Stereotypes

link broad and popular conceptions of crime to diverse criminal behaviour

EXAMPLE: “organized crime” = large, structured groups of foreign-born people engaging solely as criminals

2) Presentation of opinion as fact injecting personal opinion into media presentations without factual basis

EXAMPLE: “schools are unsafe”, “crime threatens our family”

3) Making opinions through sources collecting opinions of others that closely match the proponents

viewpoint on a given issue

4) Value-loaded terminology biased language is used to characterize and label crime, criminals, or victims.

EXAMPLE: a group of individuals may be referred to as a “crime family”

5) Selective Presentation of fact presenting certain facts to the exclusion of others strengthens a biased

argument

EXAMPLE: to emphasize issue of child abduction, a proponent could cite that thousands of children are

missing each year without presenting the fact that vast majority of missing children are runaways

6) Information management editorial process by which a particular news story is shaped and selected for

presentation to the exclusion of other stories

EXAMPLE: stories about sensational crimes like serial murder, stalkers, to the exclusion of stories on

corporate crime and fraud (more common crimes)

7) Undocumented sources of authority vague references including statements like “many police officials

feel” without specific reference to who is saying what and what constitutes “many” is misleading

8) Selective Interviewing interviewing one or two authorities and presenting their remarks as the

generalized expert opinion on a given topic

FEARS ABOUT CRIME AND CRIMINALS

- “Typical criminal” as feared by Americans: poor, young, urban, most likely black, threatening the lives, limbs, and

possessions of law-abiding citizens

- Majority of the population believe courts don’t deal harshly enough with criminals

- Majority support the death penalty for those convicted of murder

FACTS ABOUT CRIME AND CRIMINALS

- The U.S. crime wave is a myth criminal victimization has been steadily declining past three decades

- The overwhelming majority of crimes are minor incidents involving neither serious economic loss or injury

- The violent crimes that threaten our well-being are not committed by psychopaths, but those we trust the most

- The socially constructed image of crime that emphasizes street crimes committed by the poor, the young, and

minority group members is false and shifts public attention away from the most serious threats of injury

- Two primary questions must be asked about numbers purported to reflect the danger of crime in society:

1) Are they measuring what they say they measure?

2) What is the source of these numbers? Does the source have something to gain from the way crime is

presented to the public?

UNIFORM CRIME REPORTS

- Most commonly recognized measures of crime in the united states are the FBI’s UCR

- Idea originated in the late 1800’s to explore the complexion and scope of country’s crimes

- This UCR would be based on “offenses known to law enforcement”

- In general, date would consist of all reports of crime received from victims, officers who discover infranctions, or

other sources however, police report the number of offenses known regardless if anyone was arrested,

stolen property is recovered, or prosecution is undertaken

- Only requirement is that someone, somewhere, for some reason believed that a crime might have been

committed and reported it to the police

UCR Crime Categories Exaggerate Serious Crime

- The crime categories and definitions of the crime index maximize both the severity of the crime and the number

of crimes that are reported by local police departments

- Police departments have a consistent record of overrating the seriousness of offenses they are reporting

- Also, no two police departments classify crime the same way, leading to highly unreliable counts

- Certain categories are merged or described in different ways, making statistics ambiguous

Statistics Can Be Manipulated

- Statistics reporting are subject to political manipulation EXAMPLE: Richard Nixon crime lowering strategies

- Many cities such as Philadelphia are known for underreporting properly for the UCR

Collateral Effects

- UCR data highly sensitive to things that have nothing to do with crime EXAMPLE: police record keeping or

computerization can make the crime rate skyrocket. Higher rate of reported crime may not reflect any real

increase in crimes committed

- Changes in victim reporting practices unrelated to the actual number of crimes committed make the UCR crime

rates rise or fall EXAMPLE: increased awareness of rape campaigns contributed to increase in reports of rape

Unscientific Presentation

- “Crime clock” exaggerates the incidence of crime and the threat it poses to the public

- Presentation of UCR data in this form creates the impression that violent victimization is imminent

- With the exception of rape, every single category of crime shows an increase in incidence of reporting. This

means that the decrease in reported crime rates is even greater than it appears at first glance because more

people are reporting a greater percentage of crime

NATIONAL VICTIMIZATION SURVEY

- Department of justice annually surveys a national sample of residential addresses – twice each year

- People aged 12 or older are asked if they or any of member of their household have been a victim of crime in

the past year

- Measures both reported and unreported crime

Redesign of NCVS Questionnaire

- Categories of crime changed: EG. Rape was aggregated with sexual assault to create a new crime classification

- Recorded a decline in serious crime between 1973-1991, contrary to politicians’ proclamations and public

impressions

- By changing the survey and classification of crimes in that survey, it was no longer possible to make a

longitudinal comparison of reports before the redesign with reports after the redesign

Steady Decrease in Violent and Property Crime

- In 2003, survey reported 24 million victimizations – lowest since 44 million reported in 1973 when NCVS began

- Rape down 68%, robbery 58%, aggravated assault 62%, burglary 49%

- Violent crime in the US is down 55% and property crime is down 49%

- Ironically, prolonged and significant decrease in crime has been juxtaposed with increase in public concern for

crime

- Between 1993-2003 no crime category showed a victimization increase

The Reality of Crime

- Approximately 98% of the US population was not the victim of any kind of personal crime

- Bulk of crime is not heinous, violent, predatory crime that we imagine

- Less than 1% of the population aged 12 and over reported being victims of serious violent crimes

- The most worried crime: murder, is actually the least frequent violent victimization

Strangers and Crime

- According to NCVS, majority of all violent crime victimizations were by non-strangers compared to unknown

predators

- Approximately 70% of all rapes/sexual assaults of females were perpetrated by someone known to victim

- In research for some area/time, people were four times are likely to be killed by someone close than a stranger

- FBI claimed that murder was more threatening because it was becoming more random random killing is the

most frightening type of crime because it entails innocent victims killed by strangers for no apparent reason

- Based on 2002, chance of citizen being murdered by a stranger is 130,893:1

- Throughout many areas of research for crime, most offenders knew the victim in some form of way

Weapons, Injury, and Crime

- Images of crime often include violent strangers armed with weapons

- Data indicates that such crimes are the exception, not the rule weapons were used in 24% of all violent

crimes, and firearms were used in only 7%

- Most violent victimizations do not involve weapons, they typically do not involve injuries, but when they do it is

minor

- Higher percentage involved injury if committed by an intimate partner or family member than by a stranger

Race and Crime

- Willie Horton ad violent, black offender, the type most feared by white, middle-class America

- Interracial crime is very rare generally it is same race against one another

Kids and Crime

- Reports of violence by alleged juvenile “superpredators” and alleged increases in drug use by juveniles have

fueled fears of crime committed by this segment of the population

- Only 4 out of every 100 juvenile arrests involve a crime of violence less than half the adult ratio

- 92% of murderers known to the police are over the age of 18 (based on stats from 2003)

CRIME IMAGES

- Three factors appear to be responsible for the lack of congruence between the facts and public perception:

1) the media and its reporting of crime

2) alarms raised by the law enforcement establishment

3) and the politicalization of crime

The Media

- grossly distorts our view of crime and its dangers through both news and entertainment programming

- crimes such as murder are relatively rare events, but few viewers would stay tuned to watch a segment on the

theft of a bicycle or a day in the life of a pickpocket

- news media make violent crime seem normal and commonplace 75-80% of crimes will not attract viewers

- media do not accurately report the risk of victimization or the correct demographics of the crime

- homicides also were selected for coverage, tending to be stranger homicides (RARE homicides)

- mass media are the primary and most consistent sources of information on crime, criminals, crime control

policies, and the criminal justice system for most americans

- seek the most sensational and unusual crimes that fit news themes with moralistic messages

- George Gerbner’s research shows that heavy television viewers:

1) Seriously overestimate the probability that they will be victims of violence

2) Believe their own neighbourhoods to be unsafe

3) Rank the fear of crime as one of their most compelling personal problems

4) Assume crime rates are going up regardless of whether they really are

5) Support punitive anti-crime measures

6) Are more likely to buy guns and anti-crime safety devices

- Stories also tend to ignore social causes of crime such as lack of economic or educational opportunity

The Crime-Industrial Complex

- Public spending on the criminal justice system was a 366% increase in 2001 since 1982

- Criminal justice complex employs approximately 2.3 million people

- Justice system employees form a substantial interest group – even before adding in the companies and

employees who profit from providing services such as prison construction or supply

- It is in the interests of police administrators, prison officials, judges, and prosecutors to keep crime in the

forefront of public debate

- Millions of jobs depend on increasing concerns about crime

- Policy decisions and jurisdictional issues also play a big role in the importance of keeping crime prevalent

- Also a large and growing private crime-control industry providing great profit for many who are worried

- Defense industry products are also created to intrigue the worried civilians

- Private corrections industry plays on fear of crime the way the defense industry played on fear of communist

expansion during the cold war years

- Both public agencies and private corporations have a vested interest in fear of crime

- Politicians compete to see who can spent the most money and appear the most punitive in putting together

crime-control legislation

Invisible Crime

- Government and media far less willing to collect and disseminate information about the crime and victims of

criminal justice officials

- Very little government sponsored research on the crimes committed by social elites

- Crimes of corporate America, the medical community, and the military are also given very little attention

- What we are NOT told also constructs our reality on crime

Kit: “Biological and Psychological Positivism”

- For positivists, crime is explained by reference to forces and factors outside the decision-making ability of the

individual

- Crime can be best explained by examining individual differences between people, and by demonstrating how

these differences are, in turn, linked to certain biological and/or psychological factors that predispose certain

people towards criminal behaviour

- 19th century social working class proletariat

- Capitalist bourgeoisie

- Over the course of the century the ruling capitalist class made a number of compromises

o Included, for example, legal recognition of industrial unions, and extension of the vote to male members

of the working class

- Science and technology ensured the expansion of European influence and power into all corners of the globe

o Domination was seen as natural outcome founded upon innovation, invention, and technological

superiority

- Colonialism and imperialism were seen as a consequence of the natural biological superiority of the white

European

- Positivism founded upon idea that society is progressing forward, and that the social scientist can study society,

provide a more accurate understanding of how it works, and provide a rational means of overcoming existing

social problems by use of scientific methods

- Liberal reform rested upon the idea of progress, humanitarianism, and the active construction of a more caring

and supportive society

- Positivism assumes there is a distinction between the normal and the deviant, and studies factors that give rise

to the criminal

o Behaviour is determined

o Reflection of certain influences on the person

o Everyone is different

- Moral consensus exists in relation to what constitutes deviant and normal behaviour

- Approach is directed toward treatment of offenders

o Treatment must be individualized

o Punishment must take into form the classification of the offender

- Lombroso biological positivism atavism

- Phrenology

- Impact of intelligence tests may be understood when one considers that in 1989 the American academy for the

advancement of science listed the iq test among the 20 most significant discoveries of the century

- Human body types by William Sheldon endomorphic, mesomorphic, ectomorphic

o Positive correlation between body type and criminal activity

- Eugenics improving either physically or mentally the racial qualities of the future generations

o Marriage laws, segregation of mentally defective, sterilization of those with undesirable characteristics

- Psychological theories tended to centre attention on the processes of the mind in explanations of criminal

behaviour

- Control theory can be seen as an extension of psychodynamic theories that emanated from freud.

Psychodynamic theories have a common link in that a central concern is how individuals learn self-control. As

with freud, the underlying assumption of these theories is that, left to our own devices and desires, humans are

necessarily impulsive and antisocial

o Those who offend, lack self-control

Lack of perseverance

Preference for risky behaviour

Preference for physical, as opposed to mental activity

Self-centeredness

Low threshold for frustration

- Bio-social explanations have two key variables

o The differential ability to be conditions way in which genetic inheritance can affect one’s ability to be

conditioned

o The differential quality of conditioning effectiveness and efficiency of the family in using appropriate

conditioning techniques

- Biological potentials are set through inheritance + environmental potentials shaped by parenting practices =

factors that determine over propensity of individuals to commit crime

- Other factors that contribute to criminal behaviour

o Genetic contributions

o Biochemical contributions

o Psychopharmacological inducements

- Critique of positivism:

o Tendency to reduce reasons for criminal behaviour to single cauase

o Single cause can lead to racist and sexist conclusions

o Question of diagnosis, classification, and treatment of offenders

Kit: “Villain or Scapegoat? Media Violence and Aggresion”

- When events like the columbine shooting occur, a proposed answer is exposure to media violence

- Many people truly see a correlation between violence on media and crime

- People believe that as soon as television was introduced, crime rates suddenly sprung

o Television was also introduced to france, Germany, Italy, and japan around the same time and their

crime rates did not increase

- During the time of the huge increase in media violence blaming, between 1960 and 1985, the divorce rate more

than doubled, many more single parents and women began working outside the home, the use of illegal drugs

increased, the gap between rich and poor grew, and because of postwar baby boom there was a sharp increase

in the number of young males

- Youth violence has drastically decreased, and Canada only reacted so strongly to recent killings in school

because it was one of the first occurrences in the entire decade

- During 1990’s and up, at a time when rap music became popular and tv shows were as violent as ever, the crime

rate was drastically decreasing

- Many academic institutes inflate their numbers and state untrue facts about their research studies

o There have been less than 10 true studies that dealt with desensitization, and none of them agreed that

media violence causes desensitization

- Problem is that they are presenting views as scientific and proven, when they are not

Reader: “Rational Choice Perspective on Crime”

- Theoretical approach begins with the observation that crime is chosen because of the benefits it brings to the

offender

- Makes little distinction between offenders and nonoffenders and emphasizes the role of crime opportunities in

causation

Six Basic Propositions of Rational Choice Perspective

1. Crimes are purposive and deliberate acts, committed with the intention of benefiting the offender

o Benefits may come in the form of excitement, fun, sexual gratification, defiance or dominance of others

2. In seeking to benefit themselves, offenders do not always succeed in making the best decisions because of the

risks and uncertainty involved

o Wide formulations assume that an individuals behaviour is characterized by “limited” or “bounded”

rationality

Criminal decisions are less than perfect because they reflect imperfect conditions under which it

naturally occurs

o Instead of planning crimes, they may rely on a general approach that has worked before, and

improvising when they are met with unforeseen circumstances

o Decision making is “satisficing” rather than “optimizing” gives reasonable outcomes rather than the

best that could be achieved

3. Offender decision making varies considerably with the nature of the crime

o Factors weighed by offenders and the variables influencing their decision making will differ greatly with

the nature of the offense

4. Decisions about becoming involved in particular kinds of crime (involvement decisions) are quite different from

those relating to the commission of a specific criminal act (event decisions)

o Event decisions relate to the commission of a particular offense

Concern with matters such as choice of a particular target and ways to reduce risks of

apprehension

o Involvement decisions are complex and are made at three separate stages in criminal career

Offenders much decide whether (1) they are ready to begin committing crime to get what they

want, (2) whether they should continue with crime, (3) whether they ought to stop

5. Involvement decisions can be divided into three stages becoming involved for the first time (initiation),

continued involvement (habituation), and ceasing to offend (desistance)

o Decisions at each stage are influenced by different sets of variables:

Background factors personality and upbringing

Current life circumstance routines and lifestyle

Situational variables current needs and motives, together with immediate opportunities and

inducements

6. Event decisions include a sequence of choices made at each stage of the criminal act (e,g, preparation, target

selection, commission of the act, escape, and aftermath)