Crime Of Desire

[Fairy Dawdy]

Crime prevention is the anticipation, recognition, and appraisal of crime risk and the initiation of action to reduce or remove it. When we prevent crime, we prevent victimization, which is the ultimate goal!

Tiana loves the color red, and she has always wanted to drive a Ferrari. In fact, driving a red Ferrari is at the top of her bucket list! One day, as she pulls up to a local gas station to fuel up the 1997 white sedan she inherited from her grandmother, the beauty of a red Ferrari parked right in front of the store caught her eye. It had an out of state tag, and as she got out of her tired, old ride, she swore she could hear that Ferrari purring. Upon further investigation, Tiana noticed that it was unoccupied and thought she overheard who might be the owner asking another person at the gas pumps for directions. Tiana knew that this might be her only opportunity to ever drive a Ferrari, even if she had to risk a joyriding charge to do it, but alas, it was a stick shift. Tiana had never learned to drive one.

In the Crime Prevention Triangle, DESIRE is the base, as people who commit crime are driven by their desire to do so. Without desire, there is no intent to commit a crime; therefore, a crime cannot occur. In our scenario, Tiana definitely has the desire! She loves the color red, and she loves Ferraris. Tiana has even weighed the consequence of getting caught and has decided that the risk is worth the reward.

Researchers compared findings from younger (average age 20) with older, experienced residential burglars (average age 39) after they completed a 'virtual burglary' where participants use a simulated environment to choose and burgle a property. They were asked to 'think aloud' during the re-enactment and then were interviewed by researchers.

Dr Claire Nee, Reader in Forensic Psychology, who led the research, said: "It's important to understand under what circumstances young people make that initial decision to commit a crime, so we can think about intervention. The role of emotion in driving the desire to commit crime is a much neglected area and our research indicates it could be key to stopping it in its tracks. The excitement drives the initial spate of offending, but skill and financial reward quickly take over resulting in habitual offending.

"What really struck me about the research is how young offenders can't identify a clear initial decision to commit a burglary -- it's just part of the 'flow' of what they're doing with their adolescent comrades."

One young burglar said: "Like where I'm from... that's what it's like, it's crime, like, that's the norm." An adult burglar expressed similar sentiments: "I was just born on the streets... that's what people do."

The research discovered a pattern which shows that initiation into burglary is linked originally to the desire for excitement and the 'thrill' of committing the offence, but this thrill reduces once the offender has repeatedly committed a crime.

Having completed one burglary, offenders became motivated by the experience of making quick, easy money. One participant said: "I just had so much money and I was thinking, wow, is this what 10 minutes of work is."

I am a television tragic, sadly one with a penchant for crimes that take place in other cultural milieux. So far, geographically, I am a victim of Turkish and South Korean tele novellas, each reflecting the cultural overtones of those two countries. Are the crimes there very different from those that take place closer to home in Australia and in the Anglophone world? Not drastically different, but crime itself is afforded unique opportunities within these political and cultural systems different from our own.

In another addictive Turkish crime series, Behzat , still on Netflix[i], a very dysfunctional, male-dominated murder investigation team is counterpointed by the brilliant female prosecutor as well as by the daughter of the chief detective, herself a victim and a perpetrator of crime in the story. Each of the 95 episodes has a new murder, including an underlying story covering two serial killers, one a male psychopathic operator and the other, a female detective who doubles as a serial killer when no one is looking. Here is a clip of one episode:

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The neuropeptide oxytocin functions as a hormone and neurotransmitter and facilitates complex social cognition and approach behavior. Given that empathy is an essential ingredient for third-party decision-making in institutions of justice, we investigated whether exogenous oxytocin modulates empathy of an unaffected third-party toward offenders and victims of criminal offenses. Healthy male participants received intranasal oxytocin or placebo in a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, between-subjects design. Participants were given a set of legal vignettes that described an event during which an offender engaged in criminal offenses against victims. As an unaffected third-party, participants were asked to rate those criminal offenses on the degree to which the offender deserved punishment and how much harm was inflicted on the victim. Exogenous oxytocin selectively increased third-party decision-makers' perceptions of harm for victims but not the desire to punish offenders of criminal offenses. We argue that oxytocin promoted empathic concern for the victim, which in turn increased the tendency for prosocial approach behavior regarding the interpersonal relationship between an unaffected third-party and a fictional victim in the criminal scenarios. Future research should explore the context- and person-dependent nature of exogenous oxytocin in individuals with antisocial personality disorder and psychopathy, in whom deficits in empathy feature prominently.

NEW ORLEANSArchie Lambert remembers when dead bodies and gunshots were an everyday occurrence in his neighborhood."I\'ve seen bodies bleeding on every street around here," the 78-year-old recalls. "It was bad. Drug dealers, and all that, just took over. There was shooting going on all the time."Lambert spent 40 years in the optimistically named Desire housing project, one of eight public housing complexes built in the 1930s that deteriorated into crime- and drug-riddled slums. By the 1990s, when New Orleans was the murder capital of the country, Desire and the nearby Florida project had the highest murder rate in the city.Now the two projects are history, part of a plan by the Department of Housing and Urban Development to raze dilapidated public housing and provide the poor with modern, safe homes."We see this as a chance to make a real difference, not just patch things together temporarily," said Catherine D. Lamberg, interim administrator of HUD. The agency plans a series of state bond issues that could allow it to spend up to $270 million on the plan."It\'s actually less expensive to go in and start over than to try to fix what was there," Lamberg said.New Orleans\' projects became slums so dismal that in 2000 HUD seized control from the Housing Authority of New Orleans. Using a combination of grants, federal, state and city money, loans and bonds, more than 4,000 of the 13,000 old public housing apartments have been demolished.Gone is the St. Thomas complex, a mix of empty apartments and disintegrating buildings where crime, murder and drug sales spiraled. Gone are the Florida and Desire projects, located on the street made famous by "A Streetcar Named Desire.""You\'d hear the gunshots every night," Lambert remembered. "We\'d get out of bed and lay on the floor so one wouldn\'t come through the wall and hit us."The latest to go was an infamous 13-story high-rise in the Fischer project — the site of a series of high-profile murders in the 1970s and 1980s."I remember a murder investigation when we went into the apartment and thousands of cockroaches swarmed over the walls and ceilings," said Chief Warren J. Riley of the New Orleans Police Department.In replacing the demolished buildings, HUD is putting new ideas for public housing in place. The developments will have fewer units than the old, multi-story buildings had. They will also include a mix of public-housing units, low and moderate-income rental property and affordable homes for sale to public-housing tenants, officials hope.The shift has been seen in cities across the country, as housing authorities move away from the large, high-rise development programs of the 1960s and 1970s in favor of housing vouchers and smaller, scattered site developments. The federal government has given grants to local agencies to help them tear down dilapidated projects and replace them with mixed-income communities.These days Lambert lives in a newly built duplex that has wall-to-wall carpeting, central air and heat, ceiling fans, a modern kitchen, even a comfortable front porch and big back yard.The building is part of "Abundance Square," a new housing complex with 73 duplex and single-family rental units built in a style to reflect New Orleans architecture, with porches, shutters, and colorful paint.Many of the old residents of Desire are moving back, but under new terms.For one thing, the number of units has been greatly reduced — something advocates for low-income housing say is happening across the country.Fischer, which once had 1,002 public housing units, will have 324 units of public housing, plus 109 rental units, 267 affordable units for sale, and 40 market-rate units for sale.A settlement may be approved this week in a lawsuit filed three years ago by the Desire Area Resident Council, contending that poor people were pushed out to make way for an upscale neighborhood. The proposed settlement calls for the Housing Authority of New Orleans to put up at least $3 million for programs to help present and former residents of the project support themselves and find apartments.Also, under a strictly enforced "One Strike" policy, whole families are evicted if any member is convicted of criminal activity — a policy that some have criticized for punishing innocent family members."We make it very clear to our families what the policy is and how it is enforced," said Yolanda Dupaty, project manager of the Desire development.Jennie Porter, 64, raised seven children in Desire and believes the one-strike policy will prevent the new buildings from deteriorating the way the old ones did."They won\'t allow people to come in and just do anything they want the way they used to," Porter said. "It will let the decent people live in peace and get rid of the others."The city is still providing extra police for six of the housing projects. The Housing Authority of New Orleans has set up a private patrol for the new Abundance Square."I feel safe here," Porter said. "That\'s nice. That\'s new around here."

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