Copycat Crimes: Crime Fiction and the Marketplace of Anxieties

Criminal behavior and the copycat effect: Literature review and theoretical framework for empirical investigation

“…To be a copycat, a crime "must have been inspired by an earlier, publicized crime -that is, there must be a pair of crimes linked by the media" (Surette, 1998, p. 137). Copycat crime can be motivated by a real or fictional media or artistic representation whereby the offender incorporates aspects of the original offense (e.g., method/technique, choice of victim) into a new crime (Black, 1991;Coleman, 2004;Fister, 2005, Surette, 1990. Imitated crimes have occurred after intense media coverage of workplace violence, product tampering, hate crimes, mass murder, hijacking, and terrorism and after fictional depictions of robbery, murder, arson, carjacking, rape, and other types of crimes on TV, film, and video games.…”