Chapter 15 – Underprivileged Deviance

Underprivileged Deviance

• Underprivileged deviance occurs among underprivileged people who come from relatively poor and powerless backgrounds.

Robbery

• Robbery is property crime: involves taking the victim’s property
• Robbery is violent crime: use of violence or threat against victim in its commission.

Robbery as Property crime

• As property crime it involves making rational decisions: consist of 3 elements: rob mostly for financial gain, what target to rob, and how to carry out the robbery.
• Deciding to rob for money
  • For most robbers the decision to rob is based on their desire for money.
  • Psychiatrists assume armed robbers are basically abnormal suffering from a sense of inadequacy and weakness which leads to committing robbery. When being armed the robber feels nothing can stop them, they have the power. This is true for some robbers.
• Deciding which target to rob
  • Once the decision is made to rob they then select a certain target
  • Based on two factors: consider lucrative establishments such as banks, grocery stores, and other places where large sums of cash are available and two usually select among those targets one with lower risk arrest ex. A branch bank close to a highway.
• Deciding how to rob
  • Last decision involves planning, some robbers particularly professionals who are after a big score plans their crimes with great care and detail. At the other extreme some robbers for instance amateur who feel the need for some small cash commit robbery on the spot with hardly no planning. Majority of robberies are more carefully planned. Statistics show that one out of four robberies ends in arrest.

Robbery as a Violent Crime

• Two facets to robbery as a violent crime: One involves actual violence and the other potential violence. Since no weapon is carried unarmed robbers resort to actual violence.
• Armed robbers tend to rely on potential violence the threat of force.
• Since there is a lack of faith that police can control the crime, robbers are more likely to use a gun.
• Unarmed Robbery and Actual Violence
  • Unarmed robberies are more likely to result in injury to the victims
  • According to a study 66% of unarmed robbery victims, compared to only 17 percent of armed robbery victims were injured. Armed robberies are more likely to result in victims death, but likelihood is relatively small. The use of guns strongly reduces the likelihood that physical force will be used. In other words when gun involved victim is more likely to hand over.
  • Unarmed robberies are more dangerous because victims are more likely not to give in and so robbers use physical force
• Armed Robbery and potential Violence
  • Potential violence in armed robbery rarely turns into real violence because a weapon ensures the successful execution of the crime.
  • 4 ways a weapon can help robbers accomplish their crime.
    • First: weapon creates buffer zone between offender and victim. The firearm frightens the victim, robber can control a large area as well as control many victims at the same time.
    • Second: Weapon intimidates the victim meaning no reason to resort to violence. If weapon fails to intimidate, the robber tries to increase the level of intimidation by holding the firearm to the victims head.
    • Third: Robbers make a threat by shooting the victim on the side of the head or in the stomach to show they mean business, and if this doesn’t work most robbers would not hesitate to kill the victim.
    • Fourth: The weapon ensures escape after the crime has been completed. Robbers use it to prevent from anyone following them.

Patterns of Robbery

• Robberies tend to happen in large cities than in rural areas. The more urbanized, the higher its rate of robbery.
• Robbery occurs most frequently in the cold winter months mostly in holiday season (December) stores are making more money and people are carrying more money. Also cold weather often keeps most people from going out so it makes it easier for robbers to isolate any individual without a problem. Most robberies take place outdoors.
• Most of the robberies today are armed. Armed robberies have increased and involve firearms instead of knifes

Amateur and Professional Robbers  

• 2 kinds of robbers: Amateur and Professional
• Amateur robbers normally commit robbery for small amounts of money with less skill and sort of spontaneously.
• Robbers are generally unprofessional and usually do drugs and drink
• Amateur robbers
  • Can be classified into opportunist robbers, addict robbers, and alcoholic robbers
  • Amateur robbers are mainly opportunist robbers which commit other crimes such as shoplifting.
  • Ever since the 1980s these amateur robbers have been involved in a lot of bank robberies which normally was the professional robbers so this is a new phenomenon for this category of robbers.
• Professional robbers
  • Strategically plan their robberies
  • Goal is  make a large amount of money instead of a small amount like the amateur robbers
  • Commitment to robbery as how they make their living and as a common pattern, once they execute their robbery they leave town to go on an extravagant vacation
  • Always keep their eyes open for locations to rob

Causes

• Monetary gain is one of the strong motivations for property crimes
• Criminal motivation derives from poor low-class environment
•  Have suffered from deprivation resulting from income inequalities,racial discrimination or society’s failure to fulfill aspirations for decent job
• inadequate law enforcement,because of overwhelmed by violent crime and the war on drugs
• nation’s 500,000 police officers, fewer than 3,000 (less than 1 percent) investigate auto theft
• profitability of stolen cars and car parts, the demand for which is relatively high
• demand comes from foreign countries, 200,000 “hot” cars are shipped a year
• a stolen American car can double or triple in value there
• illegal items are sold cheaper and sometimes even delivered faster than legal ones from the manufacturer
• insurance fraud is also a factor ,to collect insurance money, a car owner can contract with a thief to steal the car
• carjackings  are due to the increased sophistication of the car’s security devices, such as the alarm systems, steering-wheel locks, and ignition-control systems is easier to rob while the car is turned on than when its off

Burglary

• Declined in the last 20 years
• $4 billion worth of property in a year, about half the cost of auto thefts
• Modus Operandi
  • burglaries done between 9am-11am  / 1pm-3pm when people are not home
  • cat burglars steal when people at home but are cautious
  •  Make sure there is not anybody home with a handful of tricks
  • After make sure there is not any alarms

Causes of burglary

• deviant motivation and opportunity
• obtain money to meet expressive needs, specifically the needs to maintain a “fast life”
•  absence of capable guardians, people whose presence deters others from committing crime.

Shoplifting

•  rate has been going down in recent years, it still costs U.S. shops about $33.5 billion a year (National Retail Federation, 2010). This is roughly equivalent to 1.5 percent of their total merchandise
• A social profile of shoplifters
  • boosters professional criminals who shoplift for profit
  • snitches amateurs who steal articles of small value for personal use
  • Individuals under age 21 are most likely to shoplift
  • The incidence of shoplifting is lowest for people above age 50
  • Apprehended shoplifters do not represent the population of shoplifters
  • random samples men turned out to be more likely than women to commit the crime
  • lower class, the unemployed, the homeless, and drug addicts have higher rates
  • African Americans are more likely to shoplift items of larger value
  • Whites are more likely to shoplift items of lesser value

Causes of shoplifting:

• Two main causes involved with shoplifting are economic and social-psychological motivations.
• Economic
  • Poverty plays a big role, people in poverty are more likely to shoplift than those that are not.
  • If there is not many employment there is a high risk of the  economy taking a tow.  People will turn to shoplifting to get their needs and wants. Others steal to stay in style and shoplift fashionable items.
  • Another reason for people stealing when they are not in poverty is to increase their budget.
• Social-Psychological Motivation
  • People will get an urge of excitement when they think and do the crime. In their eyes it is seen as fun.
  • Many young teens shoplift to be cool and be accepted by their peers this is known as the desire for social acceptance.
  • Rationalization: Teens are  known to shoplift because their group of friends do it, they are told to, they believe they won’t get caught.

Organized Crime

• Organizational Structure: Groups of the same race or ethnicity
• EX: La Mafia it is ran by hierarchical structure; a boss tells the lower people what to do and they must do it. They must be loyal and secrecy to their group “family”. If rules are broken they are killed.
• Organized Crime Activities:
  • 6,000 people from the Herrera family were established by immigrants from Mexico; They were known by bringing heroin to the U.S illegally.
  • 200 Colombians were knowns for cocaine smuggling
• Selling Illegal goods and Services
  • Loan Sharking:Borrowing money at an extremely high rate
  • Illicit Drugs: Drug trafficking
• Engaging in Large Scale Thefts and Racketeering
  • Known as Protection Racket; manipulating employees and union with an “amazing contract”
  • Mafia stealing by credit cards, airline tickets, carloads with merchandise, many automobiles.

Corrupting Public Officials

• The mobs have 3 main targets
  • law enforcers
  • politicians
  • officials in licensing
  • bribery

Infiltrating Legitimate Businesses

• Safest and most convenient for mobs to engage in.
• Businesses they have accessed include Las Vegas Casino and hotels, nightclubs, restaurants, motels etc. These businesses cover up they bad money during tax season.

Ethnicity and Organized Crime

• During the eighteenth century, there were pirates, robbers, and gamblers, and slave-snatchers operating  mostly in the rural, frontier settings.
• By the end of the nineteenth century, the three major gangs that were emerging in the cities were the Irish, Jewish, and Italians.
• By the time Prohibition was implemented, the Italian Mafia assumed the most dominant position in organized crime.
• Before Prohibition, criminal groups operated solely in their own ethnic neighborhoods. During and after Prohibition, the Italians expanded their criminal activities country-wide.
• Although the Mafia is the only crime group that exists in all of the major U.S. cities today, since the early 1980s they have lost some of their dominance over the underworld.
• Mafia membership has decreased because after the imprisonment of the country’s most celebrated Mafia boss, John Gotti, most other bosses have been put away.
• The history of ethnic succession in organized crime-the leadership first held by the Irish, then by the Jews, and finally by the Italians-suggests that an ethnic gang has to go through at least four stages before it can attain supremacy in the U.S. underworld.

The Four Stages in Attaining Underworld Supremacy

• Common street criminals get together to form gangs in their own ethnic neighborhood where they extort or otherwise victimize its residents.
• Confined to the same area, different gangs are compelled to compete with one another in dominating the local crime scene.
• The gangs resolve their conflict by forming a larger crime organization that allocates turfs to gangs and settles intergang disputes by peaceful means.
• Various ethnic crime organizations compete with one another, resulting in the emergence of one ethnic organization as the victor, which then dominates the underworld across the country.
• Today’s ethnic gangs are stuck in the second stage as shown by constant conflicts among each other in their own ethnic neighborhoods.
• None of the new ethnic gangs has managed to have the Mafia’s success in developing a diversified portfolio that includes not just drug trafficking but many other crime activities throughout the country.

The War on Organized Crime in the United States

• In the 1980s the federal government began to crack down on organized crime.
• The resources of the Justice Department’s lawyers, the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Department of Labor, the Internal Revenue Service, the Customs and Postal Services, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms were pulled together in order to ensure that mobster didn’t slip through law-enforcement cracks.
• Special strike forces were set up in 26 cities to arrest and prosecute numerous mobsters and seize their assets.
• Former President Ronald Reagan removed the limits off court-ordered wiretaps so that federal agents could listen in on numerous conversations among mobster in their cars, social clubs, and other rendezvous points.
• From 1981-1985, 2,554 mafiosi were prosecuted and 809 convicted.
• By 2004 the bosses of four of New York’s Mafia families have been convicted or imprisoned.