Objective: To examine the theoretical import of nerve management for offender decision-making and crime accomplishment. Methods: Data were culled from in-depth, semistructured interviews with 35 active auto thieves. Results: Nerve management is best considered an intervening exercise in the threat perception process that moderates the fear-offending relationship through its effect on nervousness. Offenders draw from both cognitive and presentational tactics to this end. Such tactics include self-medication, shunting, fatalism, smoothness, and lens widening. Conclusions: Since nervousness is both caused by sanction threats and produces conduct that potentially neutralizes those threats, nerve management is best considered an agentic response that modifies the perception of risk itself.
As with most other serious street crimes, motor vehicle theft is a male-dominated offense. Yet, women do engage in motor vehicle theft, albeit at a reduced rate of participation. Here we examine the gendered nature of motor vehicle theft through direct comparison of qualitative data obtained from 35 juvenile and adult men and women actively involved auto theft in St. Louis, Missouri. By tracing similarities and differences between men's and women's pathways of initial involvement, enactment strategies, and post-theft acts, we provide a contextual analysis of offender's perceptions and behavior. Such an approach allows a more precise discussion on gender's influence (or lack of) on motor vehicle theft. Analysis shows that initiation into auto theft and property disposal networks are governed by male gatekeepers, and this leads to some key similarities in techniques between men and women. The ways in which women negotiate male-dominated networks is also discussed with particular emphasis on the innovative strategies they draw upon to accomplish their crimes within these landscapes and when opportunities are constrained by male gatekeepers.
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