Informal Guardians and Offender Decision Making

Research has demonstrated that informal guardians affect offender decision making in a variety of crime contexts. This chapter highlights what can be learned from empirical research about the way offenders perceive informal guardianship and how it affects criminal choices. Focusing specifically on studies that elucidate the offenders’ perspective on guardians, this chapter reviews what is known from studies on burglars, armed robbers, and sex offenders about how guardianship factors into their criminal decision making. Based on these offender accounts, the chapter reveals the patterns that emerge around (a) the stages of the crime event process in which guardianship is most likely to influence various types of offenders and (b) what form of guardianship is most effective in discouraging different offenders at different stages of the crime event.

Affect (linguistics) · Criminology · Empirical research · Event (particle physics) · Legal guardian · Perspective (graphical) · Political science · Variety (cybernetics) · Computer Science · Crime Patterns and Interventions · Crime, Illicit Activities, and Governance · Criminal Justice and Corrections Analysis · Law · Psychology · Social Psychology