Multidimensional LatentClassification of ‘Street Robbery’ Offences

摘要

In a recent study of personal robbery, commissioned by the Home Office in the UK, anqualitative typology of robbery offences was proposed based on the approach used bynthe offender to commit the crime, consisting of four approach types: Blitz, Confrontation,nCon, and Snatch. Conceptual inspection of the typology reveals that these proposed typesnmay be hypothetically demarcated as the product of two latent dimensions: interactionn(between the offender and the victim) and violence (used to threaten/harm the victim).nThe current paper utilises crime scene information from 72 incarcerated male offendersnconvicted of ‘street’ robbery to test this hypothesis. Convergent statistical analysis was utilisednto test the structure of Smith’s typology first using multidimensional scaling (MDS) and thennprincipal component analysis (PCA). MDS and PCA analyses provided convergent supportnfor the existence of the four robbery styles and the latent dimensions of interaction andnviolence. Implications of Smith’s typological structure and latent behavioural dimensions onnthe conceptualisation and classification of robbery offences are discussed within the existingnliterature on ‘street’ robbery. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.