Jean‐louis Van Gelder
Biographic Data
| ID | 3780326 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Jean‐louis Van Gelder |
| GIVEN NAMES | Jean‐louis |
| FAMILY NAME | Van Gelder |
| SIGNATURE | VAN GELDER J L |
| AFFILIATIONS | Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-7928-5066 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 43 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 327 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 42 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2008 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 10 |
Hiring Decisions as a Tale of Risk Aversion Versus Stigma
Effect of Early Interactions With the Police on Intertemporal Choice: A Longitudinal Study of Zurich Public School Students
Adolescents tend to increase their offending after police contact, contrary to predictions of choice-based theories. This may be due to police contact altering their view of their future prospects, leading them to prioritize the present. Preregistered fixed effects analyses of longitudinal data collected from Zurich public school students provide no support for an association between police contact and a change in impulsivity, sensation-seeking, …
Choice, Social Structure, and Crime
On May 22 to 23, 2023, a workshop held at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security and Law explored the gap between macro-level sociological perspectives and micro-level rational choice perspectives in criminology. The current special issue is the fruit of that effort. Three main themes—structural and cultural constraints, economic opportunities and criminal justice involvement, and moral and ethical contexts—are examined in seve…
How environmental features and perceptions influence the perceived risks and rewards of criminal opportunities
A central tenet of the criminal decision‐making literature is that perceptions of the environment shape decisions. Yet the underlying mechanisms linking environmental features to perception remain mostly untested. Those that have been tested have relied on methods that are either correlational or have limited generalizability. We aimed to fill this gap by harnessing the power of virtual reality. Using burglary as a case study, incarcerated reside…
The future of interpersonal violence research: Steps towards interdisciplinary integration
Interpersonal violence is a high-priority issue for the general public, policymakers, and academics. It is commonly defined as the use of physical force - threatened or actual - with the intent to cause harm or injury (Dahlberg & Krug, 2002 ), and can be contrasted with collective or political forms of violence. Its negative consequences range from immediate effects, such as personal harm and injury, to longer-term consequences for offenders, vic…
Short-Term Mindsets and Crime
We propose the concept of short-term mindsets as an alternative to self-control as envisioned in Gottfredson & Hirschi's self-control theory (SCT). We lay out a competing perspective, short-term mindsets theory (STMT), based on this novel concept. STMT assumes that short-term mindsets are partly rooted in enduring individual differences and in part develop in response to criminogenic environments, events, and experiences. STMT connects individual…
Short‐term mindsets show co‐development with adolescent delinquency, but not with adolescent cannabis use
Guided by General Theory of Crime and Psychosocial Maturity Hypothesis, we investigated co-development between short-term mindsets (impulsivity and future orientation) and risk behaviors (cannabis use and delinquency). Parallel process latent growth modeling on three-wave data from ethnically diverse Swiss adolescents (N = 1365; M age 13.67 years, 48.6% female), showed baseline-level associations between short-term mindsets and risk behaviors, an…
Neighborhood crime reduction interventions and perceived livability: A virtual reality study on fear of crime
High levels of Fear of Crime (FOC) are associated with people engaging with their community less, lower use of public spaces, and a general sense of overall anxiety. In short, such fear may reduce the livability of an area. The primary goal of this research was to examine the potential consequences of environmental interventions intended to reduce crime on FOC and perceived livability of the area. Using immersive Virtual Reality (VR) technology, …
Reactive guardianship: Who intervenes? How? And why
Guardianship is a core tenet of routine activity theory and collective efficacy. At its outset, routine activity research assumed that the mere presence of a guardian was sufficient to disrupt many forms of crime. More recent research, however, has taken as a starting point that would‐be‐guardians must take on an active role for a reduction in crime to occur. Integrating research on bystander intervention and guardianship‐in‐action, the current s…
Is there a cybercriminal personality? Comparing cyber offenders and offline offenders on Hexaco personality domains and their underlying facets
Cyberspace creates opportunities for new forms of crime that may be related to specific personality characteristics of offenders. Few studies have investigated the personality characteristics of cyber offenders. We address this gap by comparing a judicial sample of 261 suspects of cyber-dependent crime, 260 suspects of offline crime, and a community sample of 512 participants on the HEXACO personality domains and their underlying facets. This pro…
Die Lücken in der kriminologischen Wissensgrundlage schließen: Eine Forschungsagenda für die kommenden zehn Jahre
In der Wissensgrundlage der kriminologischen Forschung bestehen gegenwärtig beachtliche Lücken: Es mangelt an wirklich interdisziplinärer Forschung; das Verständnis, wie Persönlichkeitseigenschaften mit kriminellem Verhalten zusammenhängen, ist begrenzt; dem Potenzial neuer Technologien, die helfen können, ein besseres Verständnis für die Prozesse zu bekommen, die während der Begehung von Straftaten ablaufen, wird zu wenig Beachtung geschenkt; un…
Adolescent Stressful Life Events Predict Future Self- Connectedness in Adulthood
In this study, we investigate how the accumulation of stressful life events and chronic stressors experienced in adolescence predict young adults’ future self-identification (i.e., connectedness, vividness, and valence of the future self) in a sample of 1482 Swiss youth. Furthermore, we investigate future self-identification as a source of resilience mediating the association between accumulated stressful life events on the one hand, and increase…
Virtual Reality for Criminologists: A Road Map
Virtual reality (VR) technology offers unique and as yet largely untapped potential for criminology. It can address problems that have traditionally plagued the field, provide an ecologically valid alternative for conventional research methods, and create novel possibilities for theory testing, and it allows for the study of phenomena that are difficult to research in the real world for ethical, safety, or practical reasons. This essay reviews th…
The shortsighted victim: Short-term mindsets mediate the link between victimization and later offending
Predominant explanations of the victim-offender overlap tend to focus on shared causes, such as (low) self-control or risky lifestyles. Such explanations bypass the possibility of a causal link between victimization and offending. We draw on evolutionary developmental psychology and criminological research to propose and test the hypothesis that victimization induces what we refer to as a short-term mindset, i.e., an orientation towards the here-…
Why is violence high and persistent in deprived communities? A formal model
There is massive variation in rates of violence across time and space. These rates are positively associated with economic deprivation and inequality. They also tend to display a degree of local persistence, or ‘enduring neighbourhood effects’. Here, we identify a single mechanism that can produce all three observations. We formalise it in a mathematical model, which specifies how individual-level processes generate the population-level patterns.…
A future orientation intervention delivered through a smartphone application and virtual reality: Study protocol for a randomized controlled trial
This study will provide information on the effectiveness of the intervention and allows for comparisons between delivery methods using novel technologies, a smartphone app versus immersive VR. Knowledge gained through this study can be used for further intervention development as well as theory building. Trial registration This trial is registered on Clinicaltrials.gov (NCT05578755) on 13 October 2022
Personality pathways to aggression: Testing a trait‐state model using immersive technology
Trait‐state models aim to provide an encompassing view of offender decision‐making processes by linking individual dispositions to proximal factors. In an experiment using an immersive virtual reality bar fight scenario, we propose and test a trait‐state model that identifies the pathways through which robust personality correlates of aggressive behavior, that is, agreeableness, emotionality, and honesty‐humility, result in intentions to aggress.…
The association of polyvictimization with violent ideations in late adolescence and early adulthood: A longitudinal study
Violent ideations are increasingly recognized as an important psychological predictor for aggressive and violent behavior. However, little is known about the processes that contribute to violent ideations. This paper examines the extent to which polyvictimization triggers violent ideations in late adolescence and early adulthood, while also adjusting for dispositional and situational factors as well as prior violent ideations. Data came from thre…
The Co-development of Friends’ Delinquency with Adolescents’ Delinquency and Short-term Mindsets: The Moderating Role of Co-Offending
The companions in crime hypothesis suggests that co-offending moderates the link between peer delinquency and adolescent delinquency. However, this hypothesis has rarely been investigated longitudinally. Hence, this study investigated the co-development of friends’ delinquency and adolescents’ delinquency, as well as the co-development of friends’ delinquency and short-term mindsets (impulsivity and lack of school future orientation). Whether thi…
Expertise, Emotion and Specialization in the Development of Persistent Burglary
This article describes a qualitative analysis of interviews conducted among 70 experienced residential burglars regarding the reasons for getting involved in and maintaining criminal behaviour. Themes emerging reflected an interaction between skill-development and affect, which played a key role in the initiation and continuation of burglary-related behaviour. Early participation in burglary seemed to be strongly influenced by the desire for exci…
Learning on the job: Studying expertise in residential burglars using virtual environments
In this article, we describe a quasi‐experiment in which experienced incarcerated burglars (n = 56), other offenders (n = 50), and nonoffenders (n = 55) undertook a mock burglary within a virtual neighborhood. We draw from the cognitive psychology literature on expertise and apply it to offending behavior, demonstrating synergy with rational choice perspectives, yet extending them in several respects. Our principal goal was to carry out the first…
Offending and Victimization in the Digital Age: Comparing Correlates of Cybercrime and Traditional Offending-Only, Victimization-Only and the Victimization-Offending Overlap
Cybercrime research suggests that, analogous to traditional crime, victims are more likely to be offenders. This overlap could be caused by shared risk factors, but it is unclear if these are comparable to traditional risk factors. Utilizing a high risk sample of computer-dependent cyber-offenders and traditional offenders (N = 535) we compare victimization, offending, and victimization-offending between cybercrime and traditional crime. Cybercri…
Punitive Parenting and Delinquency: The Mediating Role of Short-term Mindsets
Drawing from life history theory and developmental perspectives, we test the hypothesis that the relation between parental discipline practices and delinquency is explained in part by short-term mindsets. We argue that such practices induce an orientation towards the here-and-now rather than the future, which, in turn, promotes delinquency. We used longitudinal data (N = 1,197) from the Zurich Project on the Social Development from Childhood into…
Seeing is Believing? Comparing Negative Affect, Realism and Presence in Visual Versus Written Guardianship Scenarios
We compared participant responses on three written guardianship scenarios versus visualized versions of the same scenarios in terms of realism, presence, negative affect elicited by the situation, perceived risk, and the choice to intervene. We find that people who received the visual scenarios report higher presence, but not realism, than those who received the written version. Furthermore, visual scenarios elicited stronger negative affect and …
Getting Closer to the Action: Using the Virtual Enactment Method to Understand Burglary
In this article we describe a new method, the Virtual Enactment Method (VEM), to enhance offender recall and motivation to disclose information by having burglars reflect on their experience while committing a crime in a simulated virtual environment. Participants, a sample of 61 incarcerated burglars, ‘thought aloud’ whilst undertaking a virtual burglary. Following the ‘virtual’ burglary, emerging themes were expanded upon in an interview. We sh…
What tenure security? The case for a tripartite view
Traits and States: Integrating Personality and Affect Into a Model of Criminal Decision Making
We propose and test a model of criminal decision making that integrates the individual differences perspective with research and theorizing on proximal factors. The individual differences perspective is operationalized using the recent HEXACO personality structure. This structure incorporates the main personality traits, but it carries the advantage of also incorporating Self‐Control within its personality sphere, and an additional trait termed H…
Paradoxes of Urban Housing Informality in the Developing World
This article addresses a series of paradoxes regarding informal settlements in cities in the developing world and their relation with the legal system. The first paradox regards the penalization of illegal land occupations on the one hand versus the legalization of that same practice on the other. Second, it looks at the relationship between land occupations as systematic violations of property rights, but with the goal of forming new property ri…
Legal Tenure Security, Perceived Tenure Security and Housing Improvement in Buenos Aires: An Attempt towards Integration
This article critically reviews several claims underlying different positions in the debate on tenure legalization and empirically investigates them in a low-income settlement in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Even though both tenure legality, in the form of property titles, and perceived tenure security have separately been shown to influence housing improvement, most research has taken a relatively rudimentary approach to their measurement, and littl…
Offending and Victimization in the Digital Age: Comparing Correlates of Cybercrime and Traditional Offending-Only, Victimization-Only and the Victimization-Offending Overlap
Cybercrime research suggests that, analogous to traditional crime, victims are more likely to be offenders. This overlap could be caused by shared risk factors, but it is unclear if these are comparable to traditional risk factors. Utilizing a high risk sample of computer-dependent cyber-offenders and traditional offenders (N = 535) we compare victimization, offending, and victimization-offending between cybercrime and traditional crime. Cybercri…
Land titling, perceived tenure security, and housing consolidation in the kampongs of Bandung, Indonesia
Tales of Deviance and Control: On Space, Rules, and Law in Squatter Settlements
In Latin American cities, around a third of the urban population lives in tenure situations that can be designated as informal, yet variation in the ways and extent to which these arrangements do not comply with law is extensive. Furthermore, informal dwellers often employ a variety of strategies to legitimize and ultimately legalize their tenure, implying a dynamic rather than a static relationship between illegality and legality. Conceiving of …
Friends With My Future Self: Longitudinal Vividness Intervention Reduces Delinquency
In a field experiment, we use a novel method to test whether instilling a greater sense of vividness of the future self motivates people to act in a more future‐oriented way and reduces their delinquent involvement. We manipulate vividness of the future self by having participants, a sample of high‐school youth (N = 133), “befriend” an avatar representing their future self on a social network website. For 7 days, they reply to short messages from…
Getting Closer to the Action: Using the Virtual Enactment Method to Understand Burglary
In this article we describe a new method, the Virtual Enactment Method (VEM), to enhance offender recall and motivation to disclose information by having burglars reflect on their experience while committing a crime in a simulated virtual environment. Participants, a sample of 61 incarcerated burglars, ‘thought aloud’ whilst undertaking a virtual burglary. Following the ‘virtual’ burglary, emerging themes were expanded upon in an interview. We sh…
Learning on the job: Studying expertise in residential burglars using virtual environments
In this article, we describe a quasi‐experiment in which experienced incarcerated burglars (n = 56), other offenders (n = 50), and nonoffenders (n = 55) undertook a mock burglary within a virtual neighborhood. We draw from the cognitive psychology literature on expertise and apply it to offending behavior, demonstrating synergy with rational choice perspectives, yet extending them in several respects. Our principal goal was to carry out the first…
Housing informality in Buenos Aires: Past, present and future
As in most other Latin American cities, a principal way of accessing housing for the urban poor in Buenos Aires has been through the illegal occupation of land. Over a period of roughly eight decades, this has led to the formation of hundreds of informal settlements in the city. This article traces the historical development of informality in Argentina’s capital. It shows that different phases in this development, each with particular characteris…
Evaluating a dual‐process model of risk: Affect and cognition as determinants of risky choice
In three studies we addressed the impact of perceived risk and negative affect on risky choice. In Study 1, we tested a model that included both perceived risk and negative affect as predictors of risky choice. Study 2 and Study 3 replicated these findings and examined the impact of affective versus cognitive processing modes. In all the three studies, both perceived risk and negative affect were shown to be significant predictors of risky choice…
Tenure Security as a Predictor of Housing Investment in Low-Income Settlements: Testing a Tripartite Model
Tenure security is widely believed to contribute to low-income settlement development by encouraging investment in housing improvement. However, in spite of consensus about its importance, it is still unclear what tenure security exactly entails and few studies have examined how it relates to housing improvement. Using survey data from six informal neighborhoods in Buenos Aires, Argentina, we empirically test a model that specifies how the differ…
Personality pathways to aggression: Testing a trait‐state model using immersive technology
Trait‐state models aim to provide an encompassing view of offender decision‐making processes by linking individual dispositions to proximal factors. In an experiment using an immersive virtual reality bar fight scenario, we propose and test a trait‐state model that identifies the pathways through which robust personality correlates of aggressive behavior, that is, agreeableness, emotionality, and honesty‐humility, result in intentions to aggress.…
Seeing is Believing? Comparing Negative Affect, Realism and Presence in Visual Versus Written Guardianship Scenarios
We compared participant responses on three written guardianship scenarios versus visualized versions of the same scenarios in terms of realism, presence, negative affect elicited by the situation, perceived risk, and the choice to intervene. We find that people who received the visual scenarios report higher presence, but not realism, than those who received the written version. Furthermore, visual scenarios elicited stronger negative affect and …
Punitive Parenting and Delinquency: The Mediating Role of Short-term Mindsets
Drawing from life history theory and developmental perspectives, we test the hypothesis that the relation between parental discipline practices and delinquency is explained in part by short-term mindsets. We argue that such practices induce an orientation towards the here-and-now rather than the future, which, in turn, promotes delinquency. We used longitudinal data (N = 1,197) from the Zurich Project on the Social Development from Childhood into…
Neighborhood crime reduction interventions and perceived livability: A virtual reality study on fear of crime
High levels of Fear of Crime (FOC) are associated with people engaging with their community less, lower use of public spaces, and a general sense of overall anxiety. In short, such fear may reduce the livability of an area. The primary goal of this research was to examine the potential consequences of environmental interventions intended to reduce crime on FOC and perceived livability of the area. Using immersive Virtual Reality (VR) technology, …
Virtual Reality for Criminologists: A Road Map
Virtual reality (VR) technology offers unique and as yet largely untapped potential for criminology. It can address problems that have traditionally plagued the field, provide an ecologically valid alternative for conventional research methods, and create novel possibilities for theory testing, and it allows for the study of phenomena that are difficult to research in the real world for ethical, safety, or practical reasons. This essay reviews th…
Expertise, Emotion and Specialization in the Development of Persistent Burglary
This article describes a qualitative analysis of interviews conducted among 70 experienced residential burglars regarding the reasons for getting involved in and maintaining criminal behaviour. Themes emerging reflected an interaction between skill-development and affect, which played a key role in the initiation and continuation of burglary-related behaviour. Early participation in burglary seemed to be strongly influenced by the desire for exci…
The shortsighted victim: Short-term mindsets mediate the link between victimization and later offending
Predominant explanations of the victim-offender overlap tend to focus on shared causes, such as (low) self-control or risky lifestyles. Such explanations bypass the possibility of a causal link between victimization and offending. We draw on evolutionary developmental psychology and criminological research to propose and test the hypothesis that victimization induces what we refer to as a short-term mindset, i.e., an orientation towards the here-…
Short-Term Mindsets and Crime
We propose the concept of short-term mindsets as an alternative to self-control as envisioned in Gottfredson & Hirschi's self-control theory (SCT). We lay out a competing perspective, short-term mindsets theory (STMT), based on this novel concept. STMT assumes that short-term mindsets are partly rooted in enduring individual differences and in part develop in response to criminogenic environments, events, and experiences. STMT connects individual…
Short‐term mindsets show co‐development with adolescent delinquency, but not with adolescent cannabis use
Guided by General Theory of Crime and Psychosocial Maturity Hypothesis, we investigated co-development between short-term mindsets (impulsivity and future orientation) and risk behaviors (cannabis use and delinquency). Parallel process latent growth modeling on three-wave data from ethnically diverse Swiss adolescents (N = 1365; M age 13.67 years, 48.6% female), showed baseline-level associations between short-term mindsets and risk behaviors, an…
Evaluating a dual‐process model of risk: Affect and cognition as determinants of risky choice
In three studies we addressed the impact of perceived risk and negative affect on risky choice. In Study 1, we tested a model that included both perceived risk and negative affect as predictors of risky choice. Study 2 and Study 3 replicated these findings and examined the impact of affective versus cognitive processing modes. In all the three studies, both perceived risk and negative affect were shown to be significant predictors of risky choice…
Legal Tenure Security, Perceived Tenure Security and Housing Improvement in Buenos Aires: An Attempt towards Integration
This article critically reviews several claims underlying different positions in the debate on tenure legalization and empirically investigates them in a low-income settlement in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Even though both tenure legality, in the form of property titles, and perceived tenure security have separately been shown to influence housing improvement, most research has taken a relatively rudimentary approach to their measurement, and littl…
What tenure security? The case for a tripartite view
Land titling, perceived tenure security, and housing consolidation in the kampongs of Bandung, Indonesia
Tales of Deviance and Control: On Space, Rules, and Law in Squatter Settlements
In Latin American cities, around a third of the urban population lives in tenure situations that can be designated as informal, yet variation in the ways and extent to which these arrangements do not comply with law is extensive. Furthermore, informal dwellers often employ a variety of strategies to legitimize and ultimately legalize their tenure, implying a dynamic rather than a static relationship between illegality and legality. Conceiving of …
The Dutch Prosecution Service
The Dutch Public Prosecution Service has undergone major changes in recent decades. Public prosecutors were initially little more than intermediaries who delivered cases from the police to the judge, but the modern-day public prosecutor has many tasks entrusted to him and wide-ranging responsibilities. The case-oriented magistrate who dealt with cases from behind his desk now actively operates outside the confines of his office, developing local …
Traits and States: Integrating Personality and Affect Into a Model of Criminal Decision Making
We propose and test a model of criminal decision making that integrates the individual differences perspective with research and theorizing on proximal factors. The individual differences perspective is operationalized using the recent HEXACO personality structure. This structure incorporates the main personality traits, but it carries the advantage of also incorporating Self‐Control within its personality sphere, and an additional trait termed H…
Vividness of the Future Self Predicts Delinquency
The tendency to live in the here and now, and the failure to think through the delayed consequences of behavior, is one of the strongest individual-level correlates of delinquency. We tested the hypothesis that this correlation results from a limited ability to imagine one’s self in the future, which leads to opting for immediate gratification. Strengthening the vividness of the future self should therefore reduce involvement in delinquency. We t…
Then I'll Huff, and I'll Puff, and I'll: A Natural Experiment on Property Titling, Housing Improvement and the Psychology of Tenure Security
The provision of tenure security for residents of informal settlements has been among the highest ranking and most debated topics on the development agenda. Some have fervently argued for the distribution of property title to establish security and generate incentives for investment in housing improvement. Others have argued that it is the security as perceived that determines whether and how much dwellers invest. This article examines the psycho…
Movilidad social espacial en los asentamientos informales de Buenos Aires
Como na maioria das cidades da América Latina, uma das formas de acesso central à terra e à habitação para os setores populares em Buenos Aires é através da criação de assentamentos informais. Este artigo analisa o desenvolvimento da informalidade urbana, os padrões de mobilidade social e trajetórias residenciais em empreendimentos informais e na Área Metropolitana de Buenos Aires, durante as últimas décadas. Usando a informação quantitativa (ger…
Paradoxes of Urban Housing Informality in the Developing World
This article addresses a series of paradoxes regarding informal settlements in cities in the developing world and their relation with the legal system. The first paradox regards the penalization of illegal land occupations on the one hand versus the legalization of that same practice on the other. Second, it looks at the relationship between land occupations as systematic violations of property rights, but with the goal of forming new property ri…
Friends With My Future Self: Longitudinal Vividness Intervention Reduces Delinquency
In a field experiment, we use a novel method to test whether instilling a greater sense of vividness of the future self motivates people to act in a more future‐oriented way and reduces their delinquent involvement. We manipulate vividness of the future self by having participants, a sample of high‐school youth (N = 133), “befriend” an avatar representing their future self on a social network website. For 7 days, they reply to short messages from…
Tenure Security as a Predictor of Housing Investment in Low-Income Settlements: Testing a Tripartite Model
Tenure security is widely believed to contribute to low-income settlement development by encouraging investment in housing improvement. However, in spite of consensus about its importance, it is still unclear what tenure security exactly entails and few studies have examined how it relates to housing improvement. Using survey data from six informal neighborhoods in Buenos Aires, Argentina, we empirically test a model that specifies how the differ…
Violence Begets Violence … But How? A Decision‐making Perspective on the Victim–offender Overlap
This study applied a decision‐making perspective to examine the causal mechanisms underlying the relation between violent victimization and offending. We theorized that having been victimized affects an individual's appraisal of subsequent potentially conflictive situations in such a way that victims become more attuned toward the benefits of violence perpetration than toward its costs. Furthermore, we argued that this altered appraisal mediates …
Housing informality in Buenos Aires: Past, present and future
As in most other Latin American cities, a principal way of accessing housing for the urban poor in Buenos Aires has been through the illegal occupation of land. Over a period of roughly eight decades, this has led to the formation of hundreds of informal settlements in the city. This article traces the historical development of informality in Argentina’s capital. It shows that different phases in this development, each with particular characteris…
Emotions in Offender Decision Making
This chapter examines the influence of emotions on offender decision making. It reviews the empirical and theoretical criminological literature on the role of emotions in crime causation but also draws from other disciplines in the behavioral and cognitive sciences that have examined the influence of emotions on human decision making. Specific attention is devoted to appraisal theories of emotion, which, it is argued, provide a useful theoretical…
Dual-Process Models of Criminal Decision Making
This chapter discusses the application of dual-process and dual-system models to offender decision making. It is argued that these models offer a more accurate account of the decision process than the traditional choice models in criminology, such as rational choice and deterrence models, and can overcome their various limitations. Specific attention is devoted to the hot/cool perspective of criminal decision making, which takes the dual-process …
The Oxford Handbook of Offender Decision Making
How offenders make decisions that lead to criminal conduct is a core element of virtually every discussion about crime and law enforcement. What type of information can deter a potential offender? For whom is the prospect of a sanction effective? How can emotions facilitate or impede crime? How does the availability of guns affect behavior in violent conflicts? Do offenders learn to commit crime from the experiences of others? Is crime perpetrate…
Punitive Parenting and Delinquency: The Mediating Role of Short-term Mindsets
Drawing from life history theory and developmental perspectives, we test the hypothesis that the relation between parental discipline practices and delinquency is explained in part by short-term mindsets. We argue that such practices induce an orientation towards the here-and-now rather than the future, which, in turn, promotes delinquency. We used longitudinal data (N = 1,197) from the Zurich Project on the Social Development from Childhood into…
Seeing is Believing? Comparing Negative Affect, Realism and Presence in Visual Versus Written Guardianship Scenarios
We compared participant responses on three written guardianship scenarios versus visualized versions of the same scenarios in terms of realism, presence, negative affect elicited by the situation, perceived risk, and the choice to intervene. We find that people who received the visual scenarios report higher presence, but not realism, than those who received the written version. Furthermore, visual scenarios elicited stronger negative affect and …
Getting Closer to the Action: Using the Virtual Enactment Method to Understand Burglary
In this article we describe a new method, the Virtual Enactment Method (VEM), to enhance offender recall and motivation to disclose information by having burglars reflect on their experience while committing a crime in a simulated virtual environment. Participants, a sample of 61 incarcerated burglars, ‘thought aloud’ whilst undertaking a virtual burglary. Following the ‘virtual’ burglary, emerging themes were expanded upon in an interview. We sh…
Learning on the job: Studying expertise in residential burglars using virtual environments
In this article, we describe a quasi‐experiment in which experienced incarcerated burglars (n = 56), other offenders (n = 50), and nonoffenders (n = 55) undertook a mock burglary within a virtual neighborhood. We draw from the cognitive psychology literature on expertise and apply it to offending behavior, demonstrating synergy with rational choice perspectives, yet extending them in several respects. Our principal goal was to carry out the first…
Offending and Victimization in the Digital Age: Comparing Correlates of Cybercrime and Traditional Offending-Only, Victimization-Only and the Victimization-Offending Overlap
Cybercrime research suggests that, analogous to traditional crime, victims are more likely to be offenders. This overlap could be caused by shared risk factors, but it is unclear if these are comparable to traditional risk factors. Utilizing a high risk sample of computer-dependent cyber-offenders and traditional offenders (N = 535) we compare victimization, offending, and victimization-offending between cybercrime and traditional crime. Cybercri…
Expertise, Emotion and Specialization in the Development of Persistent Burglary
This article describes a qualitative analysis of interviews conducted among 70 experienced residential burglars regarding the reasons for getting involved in and maintaining criminal behaviour. Themes emerging reflected an interaction between skill-development and affect, which played a key role in the initiation and continuation of burglary-related behaviour. Early participation in burglary seemed to be strongly influenced by the desire for exci…
The association of polyvictimization with violent ideations in late adolescence and early adulthood: A longitudinal study
Violent ideations are increasingly recognized as an important psychological predictor for aggressive and violent behavior. However, little is known about the processes that contribute to violent ideations. This paper examines the extent to which polyvictimization triggers violent ideations in late adolescence and early adulthood, while also adjusting for dispositional and situational factors as well as prior violent ideations. Data came from thre…
Psychology (31 works) · Social Psychology (25 works) · Crime Patterns and Interventions (21 works) · Political science (16 works) · Criminology (15 works) · Social Psychology (14 works) · Computer Science (12 works) · Developmental psychology (12 works) · Sociology (12 works) · Law (11 works)