Nonviolent Crime and Criminals

1
Nonviolent Crime and Criminals

• Chapter 6

2
Substance Related Crimes and Criminals
3
Introduction

• Crimes committed to gain access to narcotics
• Crimes committed to resolve drug related disputes
• Behavioral reaction to mind altering influence of
  drugs
• Loss of control
• Increased sense of grandiosity
• Uncontrollable conduct stimulated

4
Drug Related Crimes and Criminals

• Definition of substance abuse
• Risk Factors affecting connection between drug
  use and crime
• Pharmacological effects
• Violence associated with drug use
• Drugs effect brain function and perception
• Economic effects
• Violent and nonviolent crimes committed to obtain
  illegal substances
• Crimes committed to maintain dependence and avoid
  withdrawal
• Systematic connection
• One involved in selling drugs seeks justice for
  unpaid debts

5
Drug Related Crimes and Criminals

• Drug crime relationship explanations and
  treatment
• Non causal, epiphenomenal
• Drugs dont cause crime and crime doesnt cause
  drug use
• Treat through psychoanalytic/behavioral therapy
• Unidirectional
• Crime caused drug use and drug use causes crime
• Treat through twelve step programs
• Bi-directional
• Drugs and crime are causes and effects of one
  another
• Treat by establishing therapeutic communities

6
Drug Related Crimes and Criminals

• Walters integrated model
• Incentive and opportunity
• Established through fear fear of rejection by
  drug using peer group
• Fear manifests when exposure to drug culture is
  great
• Associations with others
• Drawn to life of crime/drug use through
  dispositional/situational factors
• Personality characteristics of individual
• Individual expectations of drug use
• Quality of associations in drug culture

7
Drug Related Crimes and Criminals

• Walters integrated model cont.
• Initiation and maintenance of criminal lifestyle
• Predisposing variables already at risk for drug
  involvement
• Family history of drug use
• Pre-existing tendency to act impulsively/aggressiv
  ely
• Precipitating variables introduction to drug
  use lifestyle
• Peer or intimate introduction
• Experience with economic rewards
• Maintenance variable encouragement of sustained
  involvement
• Ready source of income and/or recreational
  activity

8
Alcohol Related Crimes and Criminals

• Personality traits correlated to criminal
  behavior while intoxicated
• Sensation seekers
• Risk takers
• Impulsivity
• Low self esteem
• Low self efficacy
• aggression
• Alcohol intoxication and behavioral changes
• Increased aggression
• Higher risk taking especially in men
• Willingness to drive while intoxicated
• Engagement in property damage
• Gambling
• High risk sexual behavior

9
Drug Dealing

• Highest arrest rates
• Harshest penalties
• Neighborhood characteristics
• Central location of community
• Physical deterioration
• Social disorganization
• Predicting drug use
• Low income of community residents
• Low status of residents occupations

10
Drug Dealing

• Drug dealer profile
• Sell as alternative to low paying job or
  unemployment
• Overwhelmingly African-American/minorities
• Drug arrest practices
• Arrests in socially disorganized areas more
  accessible
• Arrest practices in mid and upper class
  neighborhoods more difficult
• Police patrol disorganized neighborhoods more
  frequently and intensely

11
Drug and Crime Involved Women

• Female drug offenders tend to come from families
  where drug dependence and criminal behavior are
  common
• Positive non criminal and non drug using
  relationships help females in rehabilitation to
  discontinue drug use
• Females who enter drug treatment become dependent
  on social and family support

12
Legal Aspects of Substance Related Crime

• Debate over whether alcohol/drug addictions are
  disabling illnesses or deliberate acts of
  misconduct
• Diminished mental capacity not appropriate
  defense when intoxication is voluntary
• Involuntary intoxication one can rely on
  diminished capacity defense
• Substance induced disorders can be claimed as
  diminished capacity in face of criminal charges

13
Treatment Opportunities

• Some states offer treatment programs for addicts
• Small percentage of drug users receive needed
  treatment/rehabilitation

14
Organized Crime
15
Money Laundering

• Evolving universal definition of money laundering
• Current wide ranging definitions
• Concealing the existence of income, then
  disguising it to make it appear legitimate
• Process of taking proceeds of criminal activity
  and making them appear legal
• Goal of making funds derived from illicit
  activity appear legitimate
• Major participants
• Illegal drug traffickers
• Illegal arms dealers

16
Money Laundering

• Essential activities to money laundering
• Placement
• Changing illicitly derived money into a non
  illicit form and then placing that money into a
  legitimate financial system
• Layering
• Movement of these funds to conceal illicit funds
• Integration
• Reintroduction of the money into a legitimate
  financial economy

17
Gambling/Loan Sharking/Numbers Running

• Monetary proceeds received second only to illegal
  drug sale and distribution
• Bookmaking
• Taking bets on sporting events bookies get
  interest on losses
• Loan Sharking
• Bookies lend money to gambler with high interest
  rates
• Numbers Running
• Similar to daily number of state lotteries
• Cheaper and better pay offs
• Caters to and facilitated by poor urbanites

18
Racketeering

• Definition
• Includes but not limited to murder, kidnapping,
  gambling, arson, embezzlement, bribery
• Dont have to commit to be charged
  (co-conspirator)
• Labor racketeering
• Illegal infiltration into labor unions for
  personal
• Victims are members of labor unions
• Skimming
• Money taken off the top of cash transactions
• Unreported, tax free income
• Bankruptcy fraud
• Partner with legitimate business establishments
  to commit fraud
• Organized crime syndicates obtain
  money/merchandise without the banks knowledge
  and legitimate business files bankruptcy

19
White Collar Crime
20
Defining White Collar Crime

• Edwin Sutherland
• Crime committed by respectable person of high
  social status in the course of their occupation
• Too general
• Donald Gibbons
• Violation of business rules to benefit legitimate
  enterprises
• Does not account for fraud and embezzlement
• Clinnard Quinney
• Occupational crime
• Non violent infractions of legal codes within an
  otherwise legitimate enterprise
• US Congressional Subcommittee on Crime
• Illegal act committed by nonphysical means and
  concealment to obtain money/property or
  personal/business advantage

21
Embezzlement

• Definition
• Theft of goods that one had been entrusted with
  by another
• Criminal profiles
• Often highly educated
• Known to the person from whom they are stealing
• Tend to be the model employee
• Manipulative and scheming
• Triggers
• Economic hardship
• Manufactured economic needs
• To compensate for health care or treatment needs

22
SEC Violations Insider Trading

• Misperception of insider trading definition
• Insiders with trading restrictions
• Directors/owners/officers that have decision
  making authority affecting the entire
  organization
• Illegal insider trading
• Information not made public used for personal
  profit
• No clear definition of what comprises insider
  information

23
SEC Violations Securities Fraud

• Securities and commodities fraud
• The sale, transfer, or purchase of securities or
  money interests in business activities of others
• Boiler-room operations
• Used to promote sales of fraudulent securities or
  to acquire charitable donations from unknowing
  donators

24
Fraud
25
Internet Fraud

• Five general types
• Auction and retail schemes
• Business opportunity schemes
• Identity theft and fraud
• Investment schemes
• Credit card schemes
• Acts to prevent spammers
• Computer Fraud and Abuse Act
• Communications Privacy Act
• Legal consequences
• Imprisonment
• Serious fines

26
Telemarketing Fraud

• False promises made offering goods or services,
  requesting investments or asking for charitable
  donations
• Differentiating fraud from legitimate enterprises
• Goals of illegitimate enterprises
• Make the scheme seem to be a charitable cause
  worthy of payment
• Obtaining immediate payment before victim can
  inspect value
• Devising a perception of validity
• Reloading
• Fraudulent operations re approaches those victims
  it has been successful in scheming in the past
• Geographical location
• Less likely that tracking will occur if the
  victim and the illegitimate business are in
  separate states.

27
Telemarketing Fraud

• Varying telemarketing schemes
• Charity schemes
• Credit card schemes
• Lottery schemes
• Magazine/prize promotion
• Credit repair and loan schemes
• Investment/business opportunity schemes

28
Identity Theft and Identity Fraud

• Loose definition
• Purpose
• Personal information obtained and used by
  offenders
• Methods
• Shoulder surfing
• Dumpster diving
• 1998 law Identity Theft and Assumption
  Deterrence Act

29
Other types of Fraud

• Health care fraud
• Submission of false claims
• Payment or receipt of bribes
• Self referrals

30
Offenders and Victims

• Victim characteristics
• Anyone especially if careless
• Elderly more vulnerable to financial fraud
• Victims of internet fraud
• Careless in disclosing personal data while online
• Agree to pay advance fees
• Victims of identity theft and fraud
• Extremely trusting
• Disclose personal information to others (known
  and unknown)
• Victims of telemarketing fraud
• Victims of fraudulent behavior in past
• Names purchased from lead brokers
• Offenders
• Motivated by money
• Low recidivism rate

31
Internet Crime
32
Electronically Generated Child Pornography

• Definition of crime
• Knowingly mailing/transporting any child
  pornography
• Child pornography prevention act (1996)
• What computer generated child pornography can
  lead to
• Pedophiles use images to whet deviant appetites
  and lure children into sexually explicit
  activities
• Desensitizes viewers into a pathology of sexual
  abuse/exploitation of children

33
Cyberstalking

• Use of the internet to harass victims
• Practices
• Search chat rooms for vulnerable individuals
• Spy on a persons online activities anonymously

34
Stalking
35
Background Information

• Common elements
• Unwanted behavioral intrusion
• Implicit or explicit threat
• Reasonable fear is experienced
• Varying clinical definitions
• Obsessional following
• Treatment is relatively new
• Collection of stalking scarce until recently

36
Love obsessional stalker

• Celebrity stalking
• Offender profiles
• Mental illness
• Lack of successful intimate relationships
• Socially maladjusted
• Initiate correspondence with the victim and when
  they do not receive a response frustration and
  anger

37
Erotomanic stalker

• Delusional thought patterns convince the offender
  he/she is truly loved by the victim
• Perpetrators are usually female and rarely act in
  physically violent manner
• Victims are typically men of high socio-economic
  status or celebrity status

38
Stalker profile/motivations

• Antisocial personality disorder
• More violent stalkers
• Borderline personality disorder
• Unrealistic sense of importance of relationships
  intensity
• Stalks after being rejected after short term
  relationship
• Histrionic personality disorder
• Emotionally dramatic stalkers
• Considers relationships more intimate than they
  are
• Narcissistic personality disorder
• Rely on stalking fantasies to fulfill their own
  psychological emptiness

39
Predispositional Theories

• Disturbances in early attachment relationships
• Recent loss in adulthood acting as a triggering
  factor
• Terminated marriage
• Loss of a job
• Messy divorce
• Death of a parent

40
Sexual Harassment
41
Developments in the Law

• Not addressed until 1986
• Two prong test to determine a hostile work
  environment
• Reasonableness standard
• Perception standard
• Treating sexual harassment as outcome of a legal
  test that takes into consideration totality of
  circumstances in the workplace

42
Sexual Harassment Types, Models and Modalities

• Types
• Quid pro quo
• Supervisor demanding sexual favors in exchange
  for tangible job benefits
• Hostile work environment
• Employee is a victim of unwelcome sexual conduct
• Broad based models
• Sex role spillover theory
• Tendency of men to invoke sex based stereotypes
• Sexual harassment is the result of an encouraging
  individual and situational factors

43
Modalities

• Verbal Harassment
• Physical harassment
• Visual hrassment

44
Mental health concerns

• Victims suffer from anger, depression, anxiety
  and substance use/abuse
• Poor coping mechanisms lead to more serious
  psychopathologies
• Females experience higher levels of psychological
  distress than male victims

45
Property Crimes
46
Theft

• Larceny theft
• Unlawful taking, carrying leading or riding away
  of property from the possession of another
• Results in more arrests for females and juveniles
• Burglary
• Unlawful entry of a structure to commit a felony
  or theft
• Motivation
• Drug use
• Offenders lifestyles
• Know others who engage in deviance
• Exposure to criminal activities
• Absence of capable guardians

47
Theft

• Unemployment has a positive impact on commission
  of property crimes
• Unemployment Property Crimes

48
Arson

• Willful and malicious burning of property
• Essential components to designate an act as arson
• Burning of property or actual destruction of a
  target
• Presence of intent
• Condition of malice

49
Arson

• Types of arson
• Serial arsonist
• Three or more fire setting incidents with cooling
  off periods between
• Unpredictable and most serious
• Spree arsonist
• Three or more fires at separate locations with no
  cooling off period
• Mass arsonist
• Three or more fires at same location within a
  limited amount of time

50
Motivations John Douglas

• Vandalism
• Excitement
• Revenge
• Crime concealment
• profit

51
Profiles Holmes and Holmes

• White males
• Between ages of 16 and 28
• Poor academic adjustment
• Criminal histories linked to delinquency
• Repressed rage toward society
• Feelings of inadequacy, inferiority and
  reclusive-ness
• Alcohol/drug use

52
Prostitution
53
Why women engage in prostitution

• No consistent profile
• To acquire money for drug habit
• Financial provisions for minorities or those in
  lower classes
• Product of enduring childhood/life long patterns
  of abuse by men
• Product of enduring childhood sexual abuse
• Product of literal or psychological abandonment
• Product of run away behavior

54
Impact on Womens Lives

• Emotional damage resulting from stigmatizing
  factors such as
• Negative social attitudes
• Loss of control over work situation
• Harassment from clients and the police
• Increased opportunities for violence against
  women
• Organizations representing women in the sex
  industry
• National Task Force on Prostitution - Women have
  right to determine how they use their bodies
• US Prostitutes Collective sex work is a class
  isue
• WHISPER prostitutes are victims of a
  patriarchal structure

55
Impact on Womens Lives

• Financial independence
• Sexual power
• Self-reliance
• Limitations of research