Abstract
In the previous chapters, the script concept was primarily positioned as a pragmatic means to break down the crime-commission process with the aim to identify potential intervention points, to strengthen existing controls, or to introduce additional ones. In this final chapter, it is argued that script analysis may also serve wider purposes, both to an academic as to a practitioner audience. In order to embrace its full potential, however, some further developments are deemed required.
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Notes
- 1.
According to Ekblom and Gill (2015), an understanding of ‘script clashes’ is pivotal to situational crime prevention.
- 2.
Some examples of actions aimed at maximizing the likelihood of goal achievement, include learning how to use violence instrumentally, how to secure escape routes, how to dump stolen vehicles in inconspicuous places and how to dispose of goods and bodies carefully (Cornish 1994: 177).
- 3.
In this respect, Cornish (1994: 181) also points to the role and responsibility of media presenting crime as entertainment and, as a result, promoting the diffusion of new methods.
- 4.
‘Ringing’ refers to stealing and disguising automobiles for eventual resale (Cornish 1994: 173).
- 5.
As Cornish (1994: 175) points out, even more permutations may emerge in response to particular circumstances.
- 6.
Examples of such locations are parking lots (offering the scene for various types of car crime, cargo theft, robbing, raping, vandalism, etc.), shopping malls and entertainment venues (offering the scene for underage drinking, substance abuse, etc.).
- 7.
According to Cornish (1994), ‘hot spots’ may be thought of as representing important nodes in networks of procedural knowledge, which may also bind together other shared and crucial components, such as casts, crime-specific locations, props, and so on.
- 8.
See also Ekblom and Gill (2015).
- 9.
Switching to a new target or adopting a new strategy, for example, may require more time, entail more risk, or promise less certain rewards; making (opportunistic) offenders to give up entirely (Bouloukos and Farrell 1997: 226).
- 10.
This problem of escalation was confirmed in a study by Gill (2000, in Jones 2009: 107) who interviewed over 300 imprisoned commercial robbers and found that the presence of security measures such as screens or security cameras encourages some offenders to act violently.
- 11.
The authors refer to this type of hunting process as the ‘home-intrusion rape track’ (Beauregard et al. 2007: 1079).
- 12.
In a recent attempt to better connect the script concept to mainstream situational crime prevention, Ekblom and Gill (2015) distinguish between ‘empirical’ and ‘explanatory’ scripts. Empirical scripts, it is argued, are ‘simple descriptions of recurrent sequences of behaviour in situ’ (Ekblom and Gill 2015). They may at the minimum be described as ‘bare abstracted sequences of actions or associated events’, and may be used for, for example, linking serious offences through MO (Ibid.).
- 13.
Using combined data from two police operations in the UK, including 25 offenders and 36 victims, Brayley et al. (2011: 134) developed a single (offender-focused) crime script featuring multiple tracks based on the actions and decisions of offenders.
- 14.
Secondary sources such as case files or investigation reports will often not provide this type of information. As such, one will have to be in a position to interview the offender post factum and hope that he or she is willing to cooperate. This, however, makes the script development into a more time-consuming and specialist activity.
- 15.
‘Where hypothetical criminal activity is being investigated’, according to Cornish (1994: 167), ‘vigorous attempts should be made to select stimulus materials and settings which evoke accounts at the track level of specificity’.
- 16.
According to Savona et al. (2014: 158), ‘the adoption of flow chart terminology and computer-based semiotics represent the next step and the next challenge for a more precise approach to scripting that permit the analysis of crimes with a high level of complexity’.
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Haelterman, H. (2016). Wider Benefits and Future Development Needs. In: Crime Script Analysis. Crime Prevention and Security Management. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54613-5_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54613-5_6
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