Book Review: Armed Robbery: offenders and their victims

DOI10.1177/000486587600900210
Date01 June 1976
Published date01 June 1976
126
BOOK
REVIEWS
AUST.NZJC
(1976) 9
omission is being
made
good
to some extent: deterrence, public attitudes to
crime
and
the system of criminal justice,
and
labelling theory. What can one say
about
anthologies? Though frequently handy, they
can
seldom generate
excitement, so do they abound. To criticise them because aparticular study has
been
included or omitted
seems
hardly worthwhile.
The
articles presented here
in the section on labelling have featured in
many
an anthology already. Those
in the
other
two sections have
been
less exposed on the whole. Ishare Zimring
and
Hawkins' doubts
about whether
public attitude surveys
about
crime will
ever give us the answers whose discovery is their object. Perhaps the section on
deterrence will be the most useful of the three.
Canberra
STEPHEN
VVHITE
Armed Robbery: offenders
and
their victims. J M MacDonald
and
Charles C
Thomas. Springfield, Illinois, 1975.
The
author notes in his Preface
that
"robbery
accounts for almost half the
crimes of violence in the United States", and he thus introduces astudy of
armed
robbery
based on psychiatric investigations of "over 100" offenders.
The
study is
presented as a series of encapsulated case study accounts of crimes
committed
in
Denver, Colorado, and, where necessary, these examples are supplemented
by
reports or anecdotes from
other
parts
of
the world.
To gain
reader
interest,
and
to
place
the
problem
of
robbery
in some
perspective, the book begins with stories of the "pioneers" in the field - Robin
flood,
Jesse
james
and, yes,
even
Ned
Kelly -
and
this introduction reveals all
too quickly the major weakness of the book.
The
case studies collected by the
author are fragmented
under
amultitude of headings
and
sub-headings to
provide substance for
brief
discussions of motives, victim characteristics,
location of the offence,
and
the like. As a consequence,
any
insights which might
have
been
provided
by the case studies have
been
lost,
and
the
book
ends up
rather like a series of excerpts from Famous Detective Stories. As an example,
Chapter
3, which is
devoted
to
"The
Stickup", contains asection on "Cas
Stations" which includes the following anecdote:
Agirl walked into a service station
and
asked to use the restroom. Ashort time later she yelled that
the toilet was running over. As the attendant entered the restroom he
met
a young man with a nylon
mask over his face holding a steel
pipe
in his hand. He said "give me your money" and swung at the
victim with the
pipe
hitting him over the shoulder. The victim ran out the
door
and the
robber
ran
off. No loss: p89.
The
same
chapter
also has a section on "Dialogue",
and
here presents acatalogue
of statements
made
by offenders; these statements are distinguished in terms of
the types of threats made, the presence or absence of obscene content,
and
even
whether
or
not
the offender
made
any
reassuring or friendly comments.
The
inclusion of this
type
of material certainly makes
Dr
MacDonald's
book
an entertaining one,
but
he fails to
draw
any useful conclusion from this
evidence. Such insights as are
provided
are brief to the
point
of being trite,
and
are no
better
than those
offered
by the present plethora of television series
devoted
to police stories. Many minor or trivial details
about
individual offences

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