TY - JOUR
T1 - Attracted to crime
T2 - Exploration of criminal motivation among respondents in three european cities
AU - Antonaccio, Olena
AU - Botchkovar, Ekaterina V.
AU - Tittle, Charles R.
N1 - Copyright:
Copyright 2011 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 2011/12
Y1 - 2011/12
N2 - Using data from samples of randomly selected adults in three major cities in Greece, Russia, and Ukraine, several issues concerning criminal motivation are addressed. First, contrary to assumptions of many control theories, there is evidence of substantial variation in criminal attraction across individuals, with such attraction often being minimal. Second, direct measurement of criminal attraction is strongly associated with property and violent crime projections. Third, although variables from strain and social learning theories help explain criminal motivation, they do not appear sufficient to account for it. Nevertheless, attraction to crime appears to mediate the relationship between strain/prior reinforcement and criminal outcomes. Yet, the results show variations among research sites, thus indicating that the part played by criminal motivation may be somewhat context dependent. Overall, the research suggests the wisdom of further attention to motivation, particularly in improving efforts to explain it, measure it directly, and bring it more prominently into explanatory models.
AB - Using data from samples of randomly selected adults in three major cities in Greece, Russia, and Ukraine, several issues concerning criminal motivation are addressed. First, contrary to assumptions of many control theories, there is evidence of substantial variation in criminal attraction across individuals, with such attraction often being minimal. Second, direct measurement of criminal attraction is strongly associated with property and violent crime projections. Third, although variables from strain and social learning theories help explain criminal motivation, they do not appear sufficient to account for it. Nevertheless, attraction to crime appears to mediate the relationship between strain/prior reinforcement and criminal outcomes. Yet, the results show variations among research sites, thus indicating that the part played by criminal motivation may be somewhat context dependent. Overall, the research suggests the wisdom of further attention to motivation, particularly in improving efforts to explain it, measure it directly, and bring it more prominently into explanatory models.
KW - crime
KW - criminal motivation
KW - differential reinforcement
KW - Greece
KW - Russia
KW - strain
KW - Ukraine
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U2 - 10.1177/0093854811423347
DO - 10.1177/0093854811423347
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:81055124994
VL - 38
SP - 1200
EP - 1221
JO - Criminal Justice and Behavior
JF - Criminal Justice and Behavior
SN - 0093-8548
IS - 12
ER -