Examining offending behaviour following receipt of a business crime reduction partnership’s place-based exclusion sanction
| Published date | 01 September 2021 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1748895819877451 |
| Date | 01 September 2021 |
| Author | Andrew B Stafford |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1748895819877451
Criminology & Criminal Justice
2021, Vol. 21(4) 489 –507
© The Author(s) 2019
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DOI: 10.1177/1748895819877451
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Examining offending behaviour
following receipt of a business
crime reduction partnership’s
place-based exclusion sanction
Andrew B Stafford
University of Gloucestershire, UK
Abstract
This article examines the post-sanction offending behaviour of individuals who received a warning
or exclusion from a Business Crime Reduction Partnership in England. Noteworthy desistance
occurred following the receipt of the warning (76%) and the exclusion (37%). Displacement of
offending was observed, with most of those who continued to offend doing so only at business
premises away from where they received their initial sanction. Variation in post-sanction offending
behaviour was explored according to offender age and sex, offence time and whether the offence
concerned theft, violence, abuse or alcohol. Higher rates of recidivism were observed among
male offenders and those committing abuse offences, higher rates of displacement among those
who committed theft offences, and the most varied and unpredictable offending among those
who continued to offend post-exclusion. The findings presented here highlight the importance of
holistic, multi-sector Business Crime Reduction Partnerships that make information on offenders
easily accessible to their members.
Keywords
Business Crime Reduction Partnership, crime prevention, desistance, displacement, exclusion,
place-based ban
Introduction
Place-based exclusions or bans are a widely used punitive measure. The principle of
removing from a location an individual who has committed or poses a risk of committing
Corresponding author:
Andrew B Stafford, School of Natural and Social Sciences, University of Gloucestershire, Francis Close Hall,
Swindon Road, Cheltenham GL50 4AZ, UK.
Email: astafford1@glos.ac.uk
877451CRJ0010.1177/1748895819877451Criminology & Criminal JusticeStafford
research-article2019
Article
490 Criminology & Criminal Justice 21(4)
a prohibited act underpins a range of legal, civil and privately enforced sanctions. Such
sanctions have key criminological concepts and principles in common. First, they are
underpinned by key three criminological theories. Rational choice theory (Cornish and
Clarke, 1986) presents the case that a criminal act follows an analysis of effort, risk and
reward. Routine activity theory (Cohen and Felson, 1979) prescribes that crime occurs
where there is a convergence of a suitable target, a motivated offender and the opportu-
nity for a crime due to an absence of a capable guardian. Deterrence theory states that it
is the perceived likelihood of getting caught that is the most significant deterrent from
committing a crime (Apel, 2013; Apel and Nagin, 2011). A collectively enforced exclu-
sion sanction system is designed to increase a community’s communal vigilance, reduc-
ing the opportunity for particular acts or behaviours, increasing the risk of being caught
and, in turn, deterring individuals from committing such acts. Second, their design draws
upon principles of situational crime prevention (Clarke, 1997) and ideas of defensible
space (Newman, 1972), operationalising spatially targeted powers to control and restrict
behaviours and movements. Removing an individual from an area where there is poten-
tial to commit particular prohibited behaviours will harden targets (Tilley, 2002), reduce
opportunities (Felson and Clark, 1998) and increase effort and risk while reducing
rewards (Cornish and Clarke, 2003). As a result of this, and like many contemporary
criminal justice strategies, such sanctions are ‘pre-emptive’ in nature (Zedner, 2009);
based on an assessment of prior behaviour, bans are used as a means of social and behav-
ioural control, preventing offenders from committing further undesirable acts through an
increase in risk and reduction of opportunity.
Bans of this nature have been used extensively to tackle several specific crimes and
associated behaviours. A major increase can be observed in the use of legally imposed
banning in response to alcohol-related crime and disorder in the night-time economy
(Palmer and Warren, 2014). In England and Wales, in addition to the range of licencing
conditions and enforcement powers that individual venues can exercise through the
Licencing Act 2003, legal sanctions such as Criminal Behaviour Orders, Anti-Social
Behaviour Orders (ASBOs), Dispersal Orders, Curfew Orders and Alcohol Disorder
Zones have all been used to remove known offenders from city centres or particular resi-
dential areas following an incident of illegality or an act of prohibited behaviour.
Bans have also been used in response to retail crime. The British Retail Consortium
(BRC) estimates the total annual cost of retail crime in Britain to be £900 million (BRC,
2019). Retail theft by customers was estimated to be over £700 million for financial year
2017–2018 (BRC, 2019), but theft committed by employees is also a problem for the
sector (Clarke and Petrossian, 2013). The prevalence of violence and threats against
businesses has been observed to be extensive in retail settings (BRC, 2019; Harrell,
2011; Hopkins and Gill, 2017). Such crimes can impact upon employee well-being as
well as have financial consequences for a business (Burrows and Hopkins, 2005). Indeed,
the BRC (2019) identified violence, abuse and customer theft as the most significant
types of crime that businesses can fall victim to as well as the issues that businesses most
commonly prioritise through their crime reduction efforts.
Place-based exclusions are used as criminal or civil punitive measures or issued by
private organisations in response to these issues. ‘Private public locations’ such as shop-
ping centres, airports, schools and universities often have their own security services
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