The when and where of an emerging crime type: The example of metal theft from the railway network of Great Britain

Abstract

Metal theft has become an increasingly common crime in recent years, but lack of data has limited research into it. The present study used police-recorded crime data to study the spatial and temporal concentration of metal theft from the railway network of Great Britain. Metal theft was found to exhibit only weak seasonality, to be concentrated at night and to cluster in a few locations close to -but not in -major cities. Repeat-victimisation risk continued for longer than has been found for other crime types. These and other features appear to point to metal theft being a planned, rather than opportunistic, offence and to the role of scrap-metal dealers as facilitators.

Research of a Problem of Terrorist Attacks in the Metro (Subway, U-Bahn, Underground, MRT, Rapid Transit, Metrorail)

“…Such concentrations of people in contained environments make the systems especially vulnerable to attack through the use of explosives and improved explosive devices (Ashby et al 2017).…”

Concentrations of railway metal theft and the locations of scrap-metal dealers

“…This allowed the study to programmatically replicate the method that BTP officers use to determine at which station the crime should be recorded as having happened. The distance from a feature to the nearest line was considered to be more important than the distance to the nearest station, since it is from the line-side that most metal is stolen (Ashby, Bowers, Borrion, & Fujiyama, 2014).…”

An ethnographic study of scrappers and metal thieves.

“…Finally, metal theft is, generally, unlike most other property crimes, making it difficult to take existing taxonomies and apply them to this area of study. Ashby et al (2014) concluded in their study of metal theft from the railway network of Great Britain that metal thefts may more likely be planned rather than opportunistic. They also suggested that, "more certain and more detailed results on the extent to which metal thieves plan their offending could be obtained using alternative methods such as offender interviews" (p. 18).…”

“…As discussed in the taxonomy section, various researchers and authors believe (or at least identify) metal thieves as behaving in a rational manner (Ashby et al, 2014;Bennett, 2008b;Posick et al, 2011;Sidebottom et al, 2011Sidebottom et al, , 2014. Moreover, many metal thieves demonstrate significant knowledge, organization, skill and self-control to complete their thefts.…”

“…For example, the price-theft hypothesis demonstrates that thieves frequently evaluate the risks and rewards for metal theft and are more likely to commit metal theft crimes when the rewards are the highest (Sidebottom et al, 2014(Sidebottom et al, , 2011. If the price-theft hypothesis is correct then it is likely that those frequently involved in metal theft also have self-control enough to withhold from committing metal thefts when the rewards are not as great (Ashby et al, 2014;Sidebottom et al, 2014). Given the inherently economic nature of metal theft, there are two primary theories that are optimal for examining it, rational choice theory and routine activities theory.…”