In with a bad crowd : an analysis of criminal decision-making in small groups

The recent turn toward analysis of crime situations is driven in part by core findings in criminal decision-making research. These findings demonstrate that decisions to engage in crime often are spontaneous and based on immediate stimuli. That many crimes are committed with accomplices and that others play an important part in criminals' situational assessment of opportunity and their experience of crime usually is neglected. I use data collected in interviews of 50 adult thieves and 89 student accounts to examine how groups of thieves deliberate over criminal decisions, decide to commit crimes and carry them out. Crime Groups assemble in risk-taking contexts. Important effects of these situational and group contexts on criminal choice are identified. Groups move toward crime through successive decisions made by different individuals in them and through manipulations by situationally influential participants. Their composition changes as they approach crime and this further constrains their decisions. I conclude with summary statements of the importance of groups for understanding criminal decisions.