By Brendan O'Flaherty and Rajiv Sethi

Crime and policing activities routinely involve interactions between strangers and require the interacting parties to make highly consequential decisions under time pressure. Under such conditions, stereotypes based on visual or other cues can influence behavior. This review considers the role of stereotypes in shaping the manner in which such interactions proceed and the likelihood with which they occur in the first place. Our focus is primarily on robbery, murder, police stops and searches, and the use of deadly force, but the arguments apply more generally. We also consider how stereotypes can become entrenched through the behavioral changes they induce, given large differences across offenses in rate of arrest and prison admission.

Annual Review of Criminology, Volume 7, Page 383 - 401

By Don Weatherburn, Jessie Holmes

This paper finds that the national decline in robbery and theft offences is partly due to a reduction in heroin use and partly due to improvements in the economy, but that other factors are likely to have also played a role.

This report aims to describe and discuss inter-jurisdictional trends in police-recorded robbery and theft offences. Rates of recorded robbery and theft per head of population are calculated for each Australian jurisdiction from 1994/1995 to 2012. Rates of recorded robbery are disaggregated into armed and unarmed robbery. Rates of recorded theft are disaggregated into burglary, motor vehicle theft and other theft.

Sydney: New South Wales Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, 2013. 7p,

By Jamie Richard Yapp

This thesis has investigated the offence of robbery. Specifically, the semi-systematic review analysed commercial armed robbery, grouping offenders in terms of an apparent scale of professionalism to amateurism. Within armed robbery, target hardening strategies appear to have reduced opportunities for professionals, with a corresponding increase in amateur armed robbers fuelled by drug habits. The empirical study found that levels of interaction used by an offender with a victim increased with offender age. Interaction was lower for a robbery committed in an external location and for offenders with previous convictions for offences against the person and property. The violence facet could not be labelled as a specific discriminatory predictor. The findings from the research and semi-systematic review distinguished between two types of robbery offender; a career professional and an amateur antisocial robber. A career professional is older and more experienced, more likely to offend in a commercial location, commit the crime in a planned and controlled manner, use high levels of interaction and lower levels of violence. An amateur antisocial robber is more likely to commit an offence outside, have previous convictions for offences against the person and property and/or be under the influence of an illegal substance. The offence is likely to be opportunistic and chaotic, characterised by high levels of violence and low levels of interaction. The Inventory of Offender Risk, Needs and Strengths (IORNS) psychometric measure was analysed. It has the potential to provide an assessment of a robbery offender‟s ongoing treatment and risk management. However, it requires further validation and reliability analysis before it is deemed appropriate in doing so. The case study highlighted the impact of cannabis misuse on a robbery offender‟s behaviour pattern and mental illness. Implications for offender treatment needs, future therapeutic intervention and risk management are discussed along with the need for further validation of the proposed model.

Birmingham, UK: University of Birmingham, 2010. 215p.