Has there been any research done on this? Like what percentage of murders have unpaid parking tickets, smoked pot, have been convicted of vandalism or other lesser offenses.
It doesn’t have to be murderers it could be anyone who committed a felony. I’m just wondering how likely is it that a person can commit a serious crime without a history of smaller crimes.
I’m just reminded of the Asian guy in Die Hard who, in the middle of an armed robbery/hostage-taking looked around to see if anyone was watching before he swiped the candy bar.
Well, murderers distort the statistics, because a sizable number of them are basically normal law-abiding people until then. Just husbands, wives, ex-'s, or adulterous lovers killing each other. They are no more likely to have unpaid parking tickets or smoke pot than the general population.
But if you compare career criminals with the population at large, there is a significant correlation. People who make their living by armed robbery, carjacking, etc. seem to have no compunctions about shoplifting, speeding, etc.
I suppose there is research that gives details about this, but my posting is based just on comments from friends in law enforcement. They commonly relate stories of this. In fact, they often use it in their work. Pull over the guy driving with a broken taillight, find out he’s driving without a valid license, has an outstanding warrant, is a ex-felon in possession of a handgun, etc. An awful lot of their arrests start with a stop for a petty crime.
What’s a “sizable number”? Not that I don’t think “basically normal law-abiding people” kill each other over adultery, but I have a hard time believing this is such an overwhelmingly common occurrence that it would significantly skew statistics such as the kind the OP is looking for.
For murders, 50% of the time the killer is the husband/wife/ex-/boyfriend/girlfriend. Another 1/6th are parents/children/step-children. So that 2/3rds of murders are within the family circle.
These figures are from a cousin, who was the senior law enforcement officer in a rural Minnesota County (biggest town about 6.000 people). The figures might be different for a more urban area.
I don’t doubt that most murders are of people who know each other, but that is rather different from the idea that “a sizable number are basically normal law-abiding people”.
FWIW, I believe one of the strategies of the clean-up of New York City was to target petty offenses as a way of finding habitual criminals. For example, arresting a turnstile jumper often captured someone wanted on a bench warrant for other offenses.
Regards,
Shodan
One out of seven arrestees for turnstile jumping had outstanding warrants for previous crimes and one out of twenty was carrying a weapon of some sort. That comes from Fixing Broken Windows: Restoring Order and Reducing Crime in Our Communities by George L. Kelling and Catherine Coles.
I wanted to see how strong the link is. Most people think that fighting petty crimes will stop serious crimes because they think there is a link between people who commit small crimes to those who commit serious crimes. It’s like people who think that marijuana users will eventually use stronger drugs. When I read the book I realized the effect was really in reverse. If you target small crimes you put the police in constant contact will serious offenders. Die Hard aside, if you committed an armed robbery, you are likely to think less about jumping a turnstile.
Now I’m looking for statistics (unsuccessfully) for something that will back this up.
Serial killer Ted Bundy was caught twice when driving irractically.
Serial killer David Berkowitz was caught from receiving a parking ticket near a shooting.
Serial killer Joel Rifkin was caught after being stopped for having a tail light out on his car (and a body in the trunk)
Mu experience is that habitual offenders who commit serious crimes and also end up in prison, often get caugth first on a much more minor offence.
Often, further investigation will discover first that their story does not fit together, or that they have items in their possession that warrant a more detailed examination of the suspects recent activities.
Police in Leeds(where I used to live) set up a vehicle inspection checkpoint in a known hotspot for criminals. Insurance, registration and licences were also checked out. This happened around the middle of last year.
They picked up over a dozen stolen cars, three with outstading warrants, and one who had escaped from a court escort.
It is often the small things and small crimes that catch out the bigger criminals, they get complacent, or careless.
:eek: How stupid can they be?! If I had a concealed, unregistered or otherwise illegal weapon, I think I would be extra careful to avoid being caught for some minor thing and being found with it. But maybe I am just missing the criminal mind that leads to that.
Lakai, read Freakonomics for a discussion of Rudy Guilanni’s success at the broken window policy in New York.
For statistics you might want to peruse the Bureau of Justice Statistics Publications.
Do you want to know:
Does petty crime lead to felonious crime (your marijuana analogy?)
How many felons on the lam we can catch by checking “ze papers?”
Do felons worry about committing misdemeanors(Sapo, not during the felony?)
This is a bit off topic, but similar, I did a research paper on cheating and one of the things I found is that cheating breeds cheating. Not only do people who cheat and get away with it continue but their level of cheating increases. For example someone may bring a calculator in on a test and get away with it. He still does the math problems but wants to use the calculator so he doesn’t make any simple calculation errors.
He is succsessful and then says “since this worked I will use crib notes, next time.” This works and the cycle continues.
I also found that cheating and getting away with it leads to other people saying “If he can do it and get away with it so can I”
I realize cheating isn’t exactly criminal but it does give you an idea of the mindset of people in general.
If you are escaping from a bank robbery, then I guess speeding is ok. But if I were going to rob a bank, I would try to contain my urge to swipe a candy bar from the store where I bought the nylon stocking.
Also, if I had a handful of standing warrants, I would try not to run any stop signs or otherwise draw attention to me.
It’s not just murderers who distort the statistics. In my experience, there are a fair amount of people convicted of murder or manslaughter who haven’t been convicted ( or even accused of) any other crimes. There are some whose entire criminal history consists of drug arrests, and a few who have records of multiple assaults, but only assaults. Most common, however , is a person with a varied criminal history- the worst conviction might be robbery or drugs, but there are also plenty of relatively minor offenses like shoplifting, farebeating or driving without a license.
I’ve heard about the theory without reading the book. Aborted teenagers might explain why crime fell nation wide, but the teenage population in New York did not change in the early 90’s because NYC gained a lot of teenagers from the immigrants coming into the city.
Maybe there is more to it than that, but fewer youngsters does not explain why crime fell in NY.
How many felons have committed other smaller crimes, either before or after they committed the felony.
I think what you need to answer is what percentage of the normal population, considered “non-offenders” (by what standard, I’m not sure) have done these things.
I know where drugs are concerned, there’s a misconception about “gateway drugs.” Meaning that many people believe that smoking pot leads to taking heroin because if you ask 100 heroin addicts if they’ve ever smoked pot, they all answer a hearty “hell yeah!” But that obviously doesn’t mean everyone who’s smoked pot moves on to heavier drugs…quite the opposite, most people who use pot and alcohol, some on a regular basis, never do anything harder than that.
So…even if most felons have outstanding parking tickets, that doesn’t mean that they’re any less observant of the parking laws than Joe Citizen. What percentage of the regular population has unpaid parking tickets, vs. what percentage of murderers and rapists? I figure it’s likely that more hardened criminals ignore more insignificant laws than the average human being, but it’s probably not as big a difference as crime statistics on the subject would lead you to believe.
Not as far as I can tell.
Cite (PDF). This is for the death penalty, but seems to apply generally to homicides as well.
AFAICT, murderers are much more likely to have committed other crimes.
Regards,
Shodan
One of the misconceptions of the broken windows theory is that it is supposed to stop crime like never smoking marijuana is supposed to stop people from using harder drugs. There is no gateway crime that leads to more serious crime. Though by targeting minor crimes you come in contact with serious criminals more often and can prevent more crimes. Minor crime doesn’t lead to serious crime, but serious crime does have a strong correlation with minor crime. Hence, targeting minor crime became a way to catch serious criminals.
This is not the only reason it works, but it is one of them.
Thank you **Shodan **for the statistics on that.
To be fair to criminals, the police was not arresting turnstile jumpers at all before 1990. When they started it came as a surprise to everyone. Eventually criminals wised up and started leaving their guns at home. Which is a good thing because then they were less likely to shoot someone as a result of a heated argument.
“If you jump a subway turnstile, you might just get off with a warning from the police. But if you jump a turnstile carrying a loaded gun and smoking a joint, then maybe you need your ass kicked!” – Chris Rock, in his educational video, “How to Not Get Your Ass Kicked by the Police”.
One thing that drove the establishment of DNA databases for all convicted criminals in both the UK and NZ was the fact that serial rapists (once captured) were very likely to have one or more prior convictions for burglary/theft - ie minor crimes that pointed to a pattern of offending that could escalate. Not all career burglars become rapists, but a significant proportion of serial rapists had been convicted career burglars.
Making the connection between minor criminal convictions and major crimes contributed to a number of high profile cases.
Extending that - lifetime criminality can often be a family affair, and familial DNA matching is being used successfully to solve difficult cases. In one case in the UK, a teenager tossed a brick off a motorway overpass, going through a truck windscreen, and killing the driver (I actually saw the truck parked on the M3 with a smashed in windscreen). A few epithelial cells from the perpetrator on the brick gave up enough DNA, but no direct matches were found. A close match DNA-wise led the police to the family, and then to the killer. More recently, a historic rape case (20+ years old) was solved when the rapists sister gave DNA after a minor conviction.
I certainly support the police in these attempts to use prior convictions to identify and stop ongoing criminals. But it should be accepted that minor criminality does not lead to major criminality, but that major criminals often have minor convictions that can be used to identify them later.
Si