Book Review: Armed Robbery: A study in London
| Published date | 01 September 1998 |
| Date | 01 September 1998 |
| DOI | 10.1177/026975809800600107 |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
78
high-profile
programme
against bullying,
there
were
officers
who
knew
little
about
how
the
scheme
worked.
An
entire chapter
is
devoted
to
institutional
responses
to
bullying
and
discusses
some
of
the
current
strategies
developed
at
a
range
of prisons
and
Young
Offender Institutions;
such
as
units
designed
specifically
to
challenge
identified bullies, induction
programmes
to
warn
all
prisoners
of
the
dangers of
bullying
and
a 'whole prison'
approach.
The
final chapter
concludes
with
recommendations
for
creating
safe
prison
environments.
The
section
on
"Creating Safer Prison Environments- Pointers
to
Good
Practice" -provides strategies
which
would
be
not
only
useful
in
penal
establishments
but
also
residential
settings
such
as
Probation
Hostels
and
Child-
ren's
Homes.
The
authors conclude that"
it
is
hoped
that
these
findings might
facilitate
the
development of a co-ordinated
response
to
a problem that
has
too
often
been
dismissed
as
inevitable
and
intractable".
Bijal Sisodia
Senior Probation Officer
Leicestershire &
Rutland
Probation Service
UK
ARMED
ROBBERY:
A
STUDY
IN
LONDON.
Shona Morrison
and
Ian
O'Donnell,
Centre
for
Criminological Research,
University of
Oxford,
1994,
pp
95.
ISBN
0
947811
05
2,
Occasional Paper
No.
15.
This
study
was
commissioned
by
the
Metropolitan
Police.
The
authors
analysed
police
records
of
over
1100
serious
armed
robberies
in
London
in
1990,
and
they
interviewed
88
of the
robbers
convicted of
those
offences.
The
research
is
"event-oriented", concentrating
on
the
circumstances
of
the
robberies
and
the
thinking of
the
offenders.
It
is
not
directly
concerned
with
the
impact
on
the
victims.
Victims
were
physically injured
in
7%
of
the
robberies,
mostly
in
attacks
on
security
vans,
jewellers
and
post
offices,
usually
when
they
did
not
comply
with
the
robbers' instructions.
Most
injuries
were
sustained
in
beatings or violent
restraint;
victims
were
injured
by
gunfire
in
only
0.5%
of
the
offences.
Real
guns
were
most
likely
to
be
used
by
"career criminals"
acting
with
accomplices
in
robberies of lucrative
targets
like
security
vans.
They
planned
their
offences
more
carefully,
wore
disguises
more
often,
and
were
less
likely
to
be
drug
addicts.
Conversely, bluffs
(such
as
a concealed
cucumber)
were
used
commonly
by
addicts acting
alone,
in
haste,
undisguised
and
against
less
lucrative targets.
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