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Crimes as Scripts

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Crime Script Analysis

Part of the book series: Crime Prevention and Security Management ((CPSM))

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Abstract

Although crimes may be considered events with a specific location in time and place, the crime event itself is only one among many events that occur within the crime-commission process (Cornish 1994: 155). The unfolding of a crime involves a series of sequential decisions and actions (or units of behaviour), and is exposed to a variety of influencing and interrupting factors. As Wortley (2012): 186) puts it, the crime event is considered a multistaged, dynamic process that involves a connected chain of decisions based on an ongoing evaluation of the available options in a given situation, and that may take different paths depending upon the nature of the environmental feedback.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    An episodic view of memory is a view in which memory is organized around personal experiences or ‘episodes’ rather than around abstract semantic categories (Schank and Abelson 1977).

  2. 2.

    This is the reason why script analysis is also often referred to in relation to dramaturgy.

  3. 3.

    While Abelson was primarily interested in ‘behaviour-event schemas allowing individuals to perform complex action sequences without making “controlled” decisions’, crime scientists rather ‘pursue an applied approach focussing on the proximal causes of criminal events’ with the purpose to ‘deconstruct the script into molecular stages to identify actionable offender decision points’ (Wortley 2014, quoted in Ekblom and Gill 2015).

  4. 4.

    Crime controllers are those responsible for exerting control on either element of Clarke and Eck’s original ‘problem analysis triangle’; being the offender, the victim, or the place. Drawing on the work of Felson and Eck, crime controllers are either ‘intimate handlers’ (i.e. those who can handle, control, or contain the offender’s propensity to offend), ‘capable guardians’ (i.e. those responsible for protecting themselves and their belongings as well as potential victims or targets), or ‘place managers’ (i.e. those in charge of supervising places) (Leclerc 2014: 14).

  5. 5.

    As argued by Ekblom and Gill (2015), ‘empirical scripts that describe individual sequences [of behaviour] in isolation from one another may be of limited academic interest’.

  6. 6.

    As Shoham (1997: 84) indicates, such violent eruption is not a necessary outcome of the interaction process as one of the actors can take a non-violence-precipitating decision that avoids the escalation into a violent act.

  7. 7.

    In script literature, the interpersonal script is defined as ‘a cognitive structure representing a sequence of actions and events that define a stereotyped relational pattern’ (Baldwin 1992, quoted in Leclerc et al. 2014: 102). The script includes declarative knowledge about the pattern of interaction which can be used to interpret social situations and the behaviour of others. As procedural knowledge, yet according to Baldwin (Ibid.), ‘the if-then nature of the script can be used to generate interpersonal expectations and to plan appropriate behavior’. As Leclerc et al. (2014: 103) argue, interpersonal scripts include a complex sequence of contingent behaviours. ‘While an event script is a cognitive template that breaks down an ordered set of actions required to achieve a goal in a particular situation, an interpersonal script focuses on the sequencing of interpersonal events and patterns of behavioral interdependence’ (Ibid.).

  8. 8.

    Procedural variation is a concept employed by Cornish (1994) to describe the event where offenders choose an alternative strategy when confronted with an obstacle.

  9. 9.

    Viewing pornography, for example, has been found to incite rapists and child molesters (Marshall 1988, quoted in Wortley 2008: 52). Likewise, the sight of weapons has been found to have the potential to trigger feelings of aggression and, as a result, to facilitate violence (Berkowitz 1983, quoted in Wortley 2008: 52).

  10. 10.

    As argued by Wortley (2008), individuals may find support for neutralizing beliefs from those around them (‘everybody does it’), they may minimize their own responsibility, or blame others or other things for their own misconduct (‘I couldn’t help it’). They may further minimize the consequences of their acts, or minimize the victim status of their victims based on situational factors.

  11. 11.

    According to Wortley (2008: 56), ‘stress-related crimes can be generated by environmental frustrations, crowding, invasions of territorial boundaries, and environmental irritants such as adverse weather conditions’.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium

    Harald Haelterman

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  1. Harald Haelterman
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Haelterman, H. (2016). Crimes as Scripts. In: Crime Script Analysis. Crime Prevention and Security Management. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54613-5_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54613-5_2

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