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British Journal of Criminology Advance Access originally published online on April 11, 2006
British Journal of Criminology 2006 46(5):935-949; doi:10.1093/bjc/azl013
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The British Journal of Criminology 46:935-949 (2006)
© The Author 2006. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies (ISTD). All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Expert Decision Making in Burglars

Claire Nee and Amy Meenaghan*

* International Centre for Research in Forensic Psychology, University of Portsmouth, King Henry Building, King Henry 1st St, Portsmouth PO1 2DY, UK; amy.meenaghan{at}port.ac.uk.

This paper begins by reviewing research on the cognitive processing used by residential burglars when choosing targets. We then attempt to make links between this processing and the notion of expertise in the broader cognitive literature, to the extent that, in comparison with novices, processing appears removed from explicit deliberation, tasks are carried out speedily and methodically, and recognition of relevant stimuli or cues is extremely fast, if not instantaneous. We then present new data from interviews with 50 experienced burglars. We cover the initial decision to burgle and selection of the target followed by, for the first time in the UK, a detailed discussion of search strategies within the property. Forty-five out of 50 burglars had a predictable search pattern and 37 spontaneously described their searches using terms signifying automaticity—an underlying feature of expertise. We discuss the implications of these findings in terms of primary and secondary crime prevention.


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