Book Review: Metal scrappers and thieves: Scavenging for survival and profit

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0734016819871336
• Published date: 01 June 2023
• Date: 01 June 2023
• Subject Matter: Book Reviews

Book Reviews

Stickle, B. F. (2017). Metal scrappers and thieves: Scavenging for survival and prof‌it. London, England: Palgrave

Macmillan. 223 pp. $99.00. ISBN: 978-3-319-57501-8.

Reviewed by: Joel Best ,University of Delaware, Newark, DE, USA

DOI: 10.1177/0734016819871336

Modern societies consume massive amounts of metal, and a great deal of “new”metal contains recy-

cled metal that has been reprocessed. Scrapyards or recycling centers are where used metal can be

turned into cash. Some of these transactions are legal (people may haul their used metal to be recy-

cled or give permission—even pay—for a scrapper to haul it away), but others are illegal, in that they

involve selling stolen metal. Thus, we have Benjamin Stickle’s basic distinction: scrappers versus

metal thieves. His book reports the f‌indings of ethnographic f‌ieldwork that involved both observation

and interviewing.

Both scrappers and thieves are stratif‌ied. At the bottom are those who tend to be very poor, some-

times homeless, and who search—usually on foot—through alleys, dumpsters, and curbs for dis-

carded metal they can exchange for modest amounts of cash. Then there are professional

scrappers who have turned scrapping into a small business; typically, they have a pickup truck

and agree to remove unwanted trash. And there are “professionals who scrap.”These are people

whose jobs in construction or maintenance bring them into contact with unwanted metal, such as left-

over material from construction projects; such metal may be worth hundreds, sometimes thousands

of extra dollars when it is recycled. Moving up each hierarchy, we f‌ind people with more resources

that enable them to make more money.

It is possible to operate legally at any of these levels. Stickle notes that many scrappers take pride

in not stealing. However, thieves he spoke to often reported having drifted from legal scrapping into

metal theft. In general, scrapping is dirty, physical work. Scrapping may not be part of the under-

world, but it is not very far above the surface. All scrappers will encounter metal that belongs to

someone else but would be easy to take, intermingle with legally acquired scrap, and sell. And,

once individuals identify as thieves, they may recognize lucrative opportunities: A contractor who

installed metal in a project knows it would be possible to return to the site and remove the metal,

and some thieves pursue metal theft systematically, in that they search for empty or abandoned build-

ings that can be stripped of large amounts of copper wiring and piping or for agricultural equipment

left in f‌ields that can be hauled away. In a few cases, individuals report having made tens of thou-

sands of dollars annually from this sort of systematic metal theft.

Stickle also reviews reports by various insurance and law enforcement agencies about the dimen-

sions of the metal theft problem. These tend to emphasize drug users’role in the problem, where his

data make it clear that the people stealing metal are diverse. Metal thieves have different career tra-

jectories, and they are organized in different ways, adopt different techniques of neutralization, and

think about what they do differently. The most sophisticated operations involve some division of

labor (e.g., scrapyards pay higher prices if the insulation is removed from wiring before the

copper is presented for sale). What all scrappers and metal thieves have in common is that they

Book Reviews

Criminal Justice Review

2023, Vol. 48(2) 262-271

© 2019 Georgia State University

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