A Threshold Model of Collective Crime

Abstract

The group nature of offending has been recognized as an inherent characteristic of criminal behavior, yet our insight on the decision to engage in group crime is limited. This article argues that a threshold model offers broad appeal to understand this decision. After discussing the basis of this model and its applicability to collective crime, we offer one example of the kind of research that could stem from this model. Specifically, by using survey data from 583 university students, this study asked respondents to selfreport thresholds for group theft and destruction of property. By experimentally manipulating characteristics of the hypothetical scenario used to measure thresholds, we investigated both the individual-and situational-level correlates of these self-reported thresholds. The discussion considers the results that emerge from a Tobit regression model and offers suggestions for future research that would provide further refinement of the threshold model.

Public Support for Emergency Shelter Housing Interventions Concerning Stigmatized Populations

“…Nonprobability Internet samples have also been used by researchers to explore attitudes in other fields, such as cognitive processes on religion (Gervais and Norenzayan, 2012), and perceptions of change (Quoidbach, Gilbert, and Wilson, 2013). Furthermore, nonprobability samples have been used by researchers in many high-quality criminological studies (e.g., Broidy, 2001;Hay, 2001;Van Gelder and De Vries, 2012), including studies on public attitudes toward sex offenders (e.g., Pickett et al, 2013), and experimental work (e.g., McGloin and Rowan, 2015;Van Gelder, Luciano, Weulen Kranenbarg, and Hershfield, 2015).…”

Incentives for Collective Deviance: Group Size and Changes in Perceived Risk, Cost, and Reward*

“…Extant work has provided support for Granovetter's () perspective across a wide range of behaviors (Abrahamson, ; Galster, Quercia, and Cortes, ; Granovetter and Soong, ; Kaempfer and Lowenberg, ; Sandell and Stern, ; Valente, ; Wood and Doan, ), but few scholars have leveraged it for understanding criminal behavior that occurs in a crowd or group (cf. McGloin and Piquero, ; McGloin and Rowan, ). This is particularly curious because Granovetter () relied on rioting as his primary illustrative example and was clear that this perspective should provide insight into the decision to engage in collective deviance (see also Berk, ).…”

“…Recently, McGloin and Rowan (2015) argued that Granovetter's (1978) threshold model provides a useful framework for understanding collective deviance in part because it focuses on the situational dynamics that shape decision-making in group settings (Matsueda, 2006). There is an inherent assumption in Granovetter's (1978) model that collective behavior offers incentives that grow stronger as the number of people who participate in the behavior increases.…”

Searching For Influential Actors in Co-Offending Networks: The Recruiter

“…There are conceptual reasons to believe that some individuals, who are older than their less experienced accomplices, are high rate offenders and who rotate through several accomplice groups, are those who are systematically more prone to instigate group crime." The idea that some offenders are "ideas men" and that they pull in other offenders to commit crimes for/with them is only recently becoming a topic of systematic exploration (e.g., McGloin and Thomas, 2016;McGloin and Nguyen, 2012;McGloin and Rowan, 2015;van Mastrigt and Farrington, 2011), though the theoretical conceptualization has been around for some time (Reiss, 1986(Reiss, , 1988Reiss and Farrington, 1991). Our findings add to this growing line of research both conceptually and empirically, with populationlevel arrest data from a large Californian city.…”

“…We acknowledge that intelligence reports may prove more useful in the assessment of these co-offending patterns (see Linton, 2016). Likewise, self-reported instigations (see McGloin and Rowan, 2015) can provide a richer picture of recruitments, as researchers are then able to add additional variables. However, these intelligence databases were not made available to us, nor did we have access to self-reported criminal behavior at the population level.…”