Patterns of Force, Sequences of Resistance: Revisiting Luckenbill with Robberies Caught on Camera

Associated Professor Marie Rosenkrantz Lindegaard has contributed to the online journal Deviant Behavior. Together with the colleagues Thomas Daniël de Vries and Wim Bernascoshe she has published the article Patterns of Force, Sequences of Resistance: Revisiting Luckenbill with Robberies Caught on Camera.

Robberies are improvised encounters involving offender threat, sometimes force, and often victim resistance. While the association between threat, force, and resistance in robberies is well-established, sequential patterns are disputed due to biases of retrospective studies. To overcome these biases, Marie Rosenkratz Lindegaard and her colleagues draw on CCTV camera recordings of 49 store robberies. Tentative findings suggest that lethal threat reduces victim resistance and thereby offender violence, except in robberies where offenders depend on victims in accessing the valuables. In those robberies, lethal threat increases the likelihood of victim resistance despite having no effect on offender violence. By providing more reliable and detailed accounts of real-life behavior during robberies, the analysis illustrates the potential of a newly emergent field of studies of crimes caught on camera.

Marie Rosenkrantz Lindegaard, Thomas Daniël de Vries & Wim Bernasco, Patterns of Force, Sequences of Resistance: Revisiting Luckenbill with Robberies Caught on Camera in Deviant Behavior, January 2017.