Modeling Offenders' Decisions: A Framework for Research and Policy

TLDR

Developments in sociology of deviance, criminology, economics, and psychology suggest that criminal behavior can be understood as the outcome of offenders’ broadly rational choices rather than solely psychologically or socially determined dispositions, and that models need not be comprehensive to be useful for policy and research. The authors propose that this rational‑choice perspective provides a framework to locate existing research, guide new studies, analyze policy, and identify promising initiatives, while also highlighting the need for deeper knowledge of how offenders process and evaluate information. To be useful, models must be crime‑specific and separately describe the processes of involvement in crime and the decisions surrounding the commission of the offense. This decision‑perspective framework offers the most immediate payoff for crime‑control efforts aimed at reducing criminal opportunity.

Abstract

Developments in a number of academic disciplines-the sociology of deviance, criminology, economics, psychology-suggest that it is useful to see criminal behavior not as the result of psychologically and socially determined dispositions to offend, but as the outcome of the offender's broadly rational choices and decisions. This perspective provides a basis for devising models of criminal behavior that (1) offer frameworks within which to locate existing research, (2) suggest directions for new research, (3) facilitate analysis of existing policy, and (4) help to identify potentially fruitful policy initiatives. Such models need not offer comprehensive explanations; they may be limited and incomplete, yet still be "good enough" to achieve these important policy and research purposes. To meet this criterion they need to be specific to particular forms of crime, and they need separately to describe both the processes of involvement in crime and the decisions surrounding the commission of the offense itself. Developing models that are crime specific and that take due account of rationality will also demand more knowledge about the ways in which offenders process and evaluate relevant information. Such a decision perspective appears to have most immediate payoff for crime control efforts aimed at reducing criminal opportunity.