Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, USA.
Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology, Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, Georgia State University, Atlanta, Georgia, USA.
Br J Sociol. 2023 Sep;74(4):624-637. doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.13014. Epub 2023 Mar 16.
In this study, we investigate the meanings active armed robbers give to money before, during, and after their crimes and how these meanings shape their offending. We do so by examining interviews undertaken from 1994 to 1995 with robbers in St. Louis, Missouri, USA. Prior to their robberies, the interviewees' desperation leads them to define money as essential to survival. Immediately following robberies and in looking back on them, they come to view this essential money in other ways as well-as too time-consuming to get, as "easy," or as guilt-free. These meanings facilitate the contradictory way robbers see money as "fast" after offences. We discuss how these shifting meanings of money shape and are shaped by robbers' structural positions, cultural outlooks, and social relations. In doing so, we also help to explain how the shifting meanings of money play into criminogenic cycles of predatory offending.
在这项研究中，我们调查了活跃的武装劫匪在犯罪前后赋予金钱的意义，以及这些意义如何塑造他们的犯罪行为。我们通过分析 1994 年至 1995 年在美国密苏里州圣路易斯市对劫匪进行的访谈来做到这一点。在抢劫之前，受访者的绝望使他们将金钱定义为生存的必要条件。在抢劫之后，当他们回顾这些抢劫行为时，他们开始以其他方式看待这些必要的金钱，认为获得这些金钱太耗时、太容易或没有负罪感。这些意义促成了劫匪在犯罪后看到金钱“快速”的矛盾方式。我们讨论了这些金钱意义的变化如何塑造和被劫匪的结构性地位、文化观念和社会关系所塑造。通过这样做，我们也有助于解释金钱意义的变化如何影响掠夺性犯罪的犯罪循环。
