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Reprints available directly fmm the pblisba photocopying permitted by license only 0 ZOO0 OPA (Overrcas Publirbar hscciation) N. V. Publirbcd by licmre undu rhe H.rwood Audcmic Publirbar imprint. panofIhGordonmdBdPublilhingGmup. R i n d in Malaysia.Ethnomethodologists in the field of offender-based research have recently criticiscd the earlier use of pris~n-based samples in research on residential burglary. 'Ibey claim t h e ! interviewing burglars in their naturnl envinmmcnt has produced findings of grrater validity and reliability. By describing further analysis of data from earlier expaimntal research on burglars in prison. and drawing on fmdings from other work on residential burglary, this adcle sets out to highlight the striking similarity between findings from interview. experimental and ehogmphic studies in this 1~. Far from discounting earlier cxperimntal and interview studies. tbe recent ethnographic works have served to build on and complelncnt earlier work. The value of using a variety of methods in offender-based remuch is then discussed.The past ten to fifteen years has Seen a number of notable offender-based works on residential burglary both here and in the United States. The two most recent works focusing on the criminal event (Cromwell, Olson and Avary, 1991;Wright and Decker, 1994) have represented an interesting shift in methodology. Cromwell et al. (1991). moved away from the use of prison-based samples. After lengthy interviews with thirty active, persistent burglars in Texas, researchers took them back to the sites of their previous burglaries to discuss how the crime was perpetrated and the vulnerability of the target. Participants visited their own crime sites and those of other members of the sample to assess target vulnerability. Their responses were compared with a group of students to highlight the ' burglars' expertise. Wright and Decker (1994) followed with a similar * Corrtsponding author. 45 Downloaded by [Korea University] at 18:09 02 January 2015 46 C. NEE AND M. TAYMR ethnographically-bad methodology, this time interviewing 105 active burglars 'on the streets' in St Louis, Missouri.The findings from these recent works were markedly sifnilar to the earlier empirical work conducted on this side of the Atlantic (Maguire and Bennett, 1982; Bennett and Wright, 1984;Nee and Taylor, 1988;Taylor and Nee, 1988). Despite this similarity, the fact that the earlier British and Irish studies were canied out on incarcerated burglars was heavily criticised by the authors of both American studies on the grounds that prisonbased samples are a far less valid source of data than active burglars at large. This paper aims to show that these criticisms an largely overstated and that despite the considerable cultural divide (including greater reported drug dependence in the US samples) the later studies are simply building on the earlier interview and experimental work.We feel t h m is a logical progression between the earlier British andIrish prison-based studies and the later US ethnomethodologic...

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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 robust test of expertise in offenders by having these groups undertake a burglary in a fully fledged reenactment of a crime in a virtual environment. Our findings indicate that the virtual environment successfully reinstated the context of the crime showing clear differences in the decision making of burglars compared with other groups in ways commensurate with expertise in other behavioral domains. Specifically, burglars scoped the neighborhood more thoroughly, spent more time in the high‐value areas of the crime scene while traveling less distance there, and targeted different goods from the comparison groups. The level of detail in the data generated sheds new light on the cognitive processes and actions of burglars and how they “learn on the job.” Implications for criminal decision‐making perspectives and psychological theories of expertise are discussed.

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