Managing Victim Confrontation: Auto Theft and Informal Sanction Threats

Objectives. This paper explores how offenders manage the prospect of victim confrontation during auto theft. Methods. Data were drawn from in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 35 active offenders recruited from the streets of a large Midwestern US city using snowball sampling methods. Results. Two contextual domains figured prominently in the offenders’ decision-making calculus: The area around the target and the target itself. The first galvanized the offenders’ attention to, and management of, informal social control. The second enjoined offenders to balance speed and stealth in breaching the target. Conclusions. Victim confrontation is an informal sanction that is distinct from both retaliation and traditional extralegal sanctions. The rarity with which it occurs in auto theft is likely due to confrontation avoidance measures offenders adopt at the front end of the offense and during the enactment process itself. The conceptual implications of victim confrontation in crime are explored in relation to the following five areas: (1) sanction celerity and present orientation; (2) sanction certainty and ambiguity aversion; (3) sanction interdependence; (4) violence avoidance; and (5) directions for future research.