Research on Criminal Interaction
During the 2007 Fall semester Dr. John McCluskey was granted a faculty leave which offered him the opportunity to explore research on the topic of robbery. Why in the world would someone be interested in robbery? Well, it is an interesting offshoot of earlier research he had done on everyday police-citizen encounters. That research focused on whether police can get suspects to exercise self-control and in particular whether coercion or “fair treatment” worked best. Interestingly, fair treatment appears most effective in that context. This relates back to larger issues of human interaction, legitimacy, and reciprocity. Authorities (police) that make demands of subjects (citizens) are more successful at gaining compliance when they limit their coercive power and emphasize fair treatment through respect, neutrality and offering citizens an opportunity to participate by giving information.
On the surface, robbery could not be more different from police-citizen interactions. Robbery is generally defined as taking an item from another person through force or threat of force -- which is really another instance of compliance seeking. Unlike police, robbers are reliant on coercion, hence the popular perception regarding the pervasive violence associated with this crime.
During the Summer and Fall semesters of 2007, McCluskey waded through dozens of research articles and books to prepare for thinking about the research and to identify interesting questions or contrasts that might emerge. One jumped out right away. Interviews with robbers consistently indicated that those involved in commercial robberies stated they were less inclined to use force than street robbers. This provided a stark contrast with popular conceptions of robbery as chaotic and invariably violent. The commercial robbers noted that their typical approach requires the victim to be, in some sense, an accomplice who cooperates in relieving the business of its money. Conversely, according to street robbers, victims who are asked to give up their own property are expected to be reluctant to comply. In that sense, a real threat of death is very effective in accomplishing that street robbery.
McCluskey had access to data that graduate students at Michigan State University coded on nearly 2,000 robberies that occurred in Detroit, Michigan between 2000 and 2003. The data allowed him to examine many factors including whether and when the offender used physical force during the robbery and if the event was a street or commercial robbery. The preliminary findings tested whether the two types of robbery targets differed in terms of the physical coercion used by offenders. The results confirmed that contemporary commercial robberies involved significantly less physical force compared to street robberies.
Future questions he hopes to address include comparing San Antonio to Detroit in terms of robbery injuries and physical coercion, examining sex differences in force used during robberies, and exploring the differences between successful and thwarted robberies. He also looks forward to bringing the excitement of building new knowledge into the classroom this Fall in an undergraduate seminar on violence and plans to teach graduate courses on that topic as well.
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