Abstract
The objective of this study is to help investigators identify the characteristics of pickpocketing cases that are related to their solvability and detection and to use them to develop a predictive model for guiding case-screening decisions. It is based on a population of 36,260 pickpocketing incidents that took place on railway property policed by the British Transport Police between 2010 and 2015. Ten solvability factors were identified that explained 44% of the variation in detection outcomes and were used to calculate a solvability score for each incident, which indicates whether or not cases should be screened in for further investigation. The predictive model is five times as accurate as existing screening practices and can be used to discriminate between highly solvable cases likely to be detected and low-solvability cases with poor prospects of being solved. The use of a case-screening tool based on this predictive model could, depending on the solvability threshold selected, result in 30% rather than 90% of unsolved cases being investigated, saving over 20,000 h of investigation time a year wasted investigating difficult, if not impossible, to solve cases. A small number of cases that are currently solved would, with statistical case screening, remain undetected.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Andersson, P. K. (2014). ‘Bustling, crowding, and pushing’: Pickpockets and the nineteenth-century street crowd. Urban History, 41(2), 291–310.
Brandl, S. G., & Frank, J. (1994). The relationship between evidence, detective effort, and the disposition of burglary and robbery investigations. American Journal of Police, 13(3), 149–168.
Burrows, J., Hopkins, M., Hubbard, R., Robinson, A., Speed, M., & Tilley, N. (2005). Understanding the attrition process in volume crime investigations (Home Office Research Study 295). London: Home Office.
Chaiken, J. M., Greenwood, P. W., & Petersilia, J. (1976). The criminal investigation process: A summary report. Santa Monica, CA: The RAND Corporation.
Cohen, J. (1988). Statistical power analysis for the behavioral sciences (2nd ed.). Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Coupe, R. T., & Kaur, S. (2005). The role of alarms and CCTV in detecting non-residential burglary. Security Journal, 18(2), 53–72.
Eck, J. E. (1979). Managing case assignments: The burglary investigation decision model replication. Washington, DC: Police Executive Research Forum.
Eck, J. E. (1983). Solving crimes: The investigation of burglary and robbery. Washington DC: Police Executive Research Forum.
Eitle, D., Stolzenberg, I., & D’Alessio, S. J. (2005). Police organizational factors, the racial composition of the police, and the probability of arrest. Justice Quarterly, 22(1), 30–57.
Gill, M., Hart, J., Livingstone, K., & Stevens, J. (1996). The crime allocation system: Police investigations into burglary and auto crime (Police Research Series, Paper 16). London: Home Office.
Greenwood, P. W. (1970). An analysis of the apprehension activities of the New York City Police Department. Santa Monica, CA: The RAND Corporation.
Greenwood, P. W., Chaiken, J. M., Petersilia, J., & Prusoff, L. (1975). The criminal investigation process: Volume III: Observations and analysis. Santa Monica, CA: The RAND Corporation.
Isaacs, H. (1967). A study of communications, crimes and arrests in a metropolitan police department. Task force report: Science and technology. Washington, DC: UN Government Printing Office.
Jansson, K. (2005). Volume crime investigations—A review of the research literature (Home Office Online Report OLR 44/05). London: Home Office.
Newton, A., Partridge, H., & Gill, A. (2014). Above and below: Measuring crime risk in and around underground mass transit systems. Crime Science, 3(1), 1–14.
Olphin, T. W. L. (2015). Solving violent crime: Targeting factors that predict clearance of non-domestic violent offences (unpublished MSt thesis). University of Cambridge.
Paine, C. (2012). Solvability factors in dwelling burglaries in Thames Valley (Unpublished MSt thesis). University of Cambridge.
Peterson, J., Sommers, I., Baskin, D., & Johnson, D. (2010). The role and impact of forensic evidence in the criminal justice process. Washington, D.C.: National Institute of Justice.
Pickpocketing: A survey of the crime and its control (1995). University of Pennsylvania Law Review, 104(3), 408–420.
Reiss, A., & Bordua, D. J. (1967). Environment and organisation: A perspective on the police. In D. J. Bordua (Ed.), The police: Six sociological essays. New York: Wiley.
Smith, M. J. (2008). Addressing the security needs of women passengers on public transport. Security Journal, 21(1–2), 117–133.
Waegel, W. B. (1982). Patterns of police investigation of urban crimes. Journal of Police Science and Administration, 10(4), 452–465.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Sharp, S., Coupe, R.T. (2019). Pickpocketing on Railways. In: Coupe, R., Ariel, B., Mueller-Johnson, K. (eds) Crime Solvability Factors. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17160-5_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17160-5_6
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-17159-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-17160-5
eBook Packages: Law and CriminologyLaw and Criminology (R0)