Learning on the job: Studying expertise in residential burglars using virtual environments*

• Author: Zarah Vernham,Marco Otte,Amy Meenaghan,Jean‐Louis Gelder,Claire Nee
• Date: 01 August 2019
• Published date: 01 August 2019
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1745-9125.12210

Received: 19 November2017 Revised: 16 January 2019 Accepted:25 January 2019

DOI: 10.1111/1745-9125.12210

ARTICLE

Learning on the job: Studying expertise

in residential burglars using virtual environments*

Claire Nee1Jean-Louis van Gelder2Marco Otte3Zarah Vernham1

Amy Meenaghan1

1Department of Psychology, University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, U.K.

2Faculty of Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences, Universityof Twente, Enschede, the Netherlands

3Network Institute, VU University,Amsterdam, the Netherlands

Correspondence

ClaireNee, Depar tment of Psychology,Univer-

sityof Por tsmouth, King Henry Building, King

Henry 1st St.Por tsmouth, PO1 2DY,U.K.

Email:claire.nee@por t.ac.uk

Fundinginformation

British Academy,Grant/AwardNumber:

SG151138

*Wewish to acknowledgethe Amsterdam Law

&Behavior Institute (A-LAB), University

ofPortsmout h, and the British Academy for

fundingt his project; the NationalOffender

ManagementService (now HMPPS) for grant-

ingper mission to undertake the research in U.K.

prisons; students who helped with data collec-

tion:Kayleigh Cooper, Josh Cole, and Jennifer

Evans;and our participants and staff in pr isons

whowent above and beyond the call of duty to

assistus dur ing a challengingtime in the U.K.

prison service.

Abstract

In this article, we describe a quasi-experiment in which

experienced incarcerated burglars (n =56), other offenders

(n =50), and nonoffenders (n =55) undertook a mock

burglary within a virtual neighborhood. We draw from

the cognitive psychology literature on expertise and apply

it to offending behavior, demonstrating synergy with

rational choice perspectives, yet extending them in several

respects. Our principal goal was to carry out the first

robust test of expertise in offenders by having these groups

undertake a burglary in a fully fledged reenactment of a

crime in a virtual environment. Our findings indicate that

the virtual environment successfully reinstated the context

of the crime showing clear differences in the decision

making of burglars compared with other groups in ways

commensurate with expertise in other behavioral domains.

Specifically, burglars scoped the neighborhood more

thoroughly, spent more time in the high-value areas of the

crime scene while traveling less distance there, and targeted

different goods from the comparison groups. The level of

detail in the data generated sheds new light on the cognitive

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in

any medium, provided the original work is properlycited.

© 2019 The Authors. Criminology published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of American Society of Criminology

Criminology. 2019;57:481–511. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/crim 481

482 NEE ET AL.

processes and actions of burglars and how they“lear n on the

job.” Implications for criminal decision-making perspec-

tives and psychological theories of expertise are discussed.

KEYWORDS

burglar decision making, crime prevention, expertise, rational choice,

virtual reality

“It’s like anything, like doing crosswords regular, especially from the same paper, I get

to know what kind of cryptic clues the guy writes, it’s like, it’s a matter of practice. So if

I’m regularly doing burglaries, I get a lot more quicker and better at what I’m doing.”

– Burglar #23

It has been powerfully argued that crime is easy, does not require specific skill sets, and is pre-

dominantly driven by a lack of self-control and quick reward (Gottfredson & Hirschi, 1990; Pratt &

Cullen, 2000). Few researchers will argue with the idea that most “typical” acquisitive offenders lead

chaotic lives and have low educational attainment, poor employment records, histories of drug abuse,

relationship difficulties, and so on (Farrington & Welsh, 2007). This picture of the dysregulated

offender may have overshadowed the fact that at least certain types of crime benefit from advanced

skill sets (Grasmick, Tittle, Bursik, & Arneklev, 1993). Consider the significant technical knowledge

and skill associated with computer hacking (Holt, Bossler, & Seigfried-Spellar, 2015); the competent

interpersonal skill displayed in certain forms of identity theft (Vieraitis, Copes, Powell, & Pike, 2015);

or the planning, grooming, and deception required to elude detection in the predatory child molester

(Fortune, Bourke, & Ward, 2015; Ward, 1999). Such “expertise” has also been reported in social cue

processing in street criminals (Topalli, 2005); the procedural scripts of arsonists (Butler & Gannon,

2015); the practiced coercion and control used in the planning and execution of murder (Brookman,

2015), domestic abuse (Day & Bowen, 2015), and rape Ó Ciardha, 2015; and finally the perceptual

and procedural scripts of carjackers (Topalli, Jacques, & Wright, 2015).

In this article, we argue that expertise develops in offenders as they operate on the job in ways

similar to expertise development in legitimate activities, and that a better understanding of this

maladaptive form of competence can extend our knowledge of offender decision making in important

ways. As part of a program of research that has become known as the “Virtual Burglary Project,” we

use a virtual environment to test several assumptions related to the nature of burglar expertise and

decision making generated from previous studies and established decision-making perspectives while

shedding alternative light on the thesis that offending involves little skill.

We aim to contribute to the literature in different ways. First, we draw from cognitive and social

psychology research and theory on expertise and apply it to offender decision making. We argue that

our approach is complementary to rational choice perspectives of offender decision making but extends

such perspectives in several consequential respects. Expertise augments the functional description of

decision making by adding a deeper explanatory level involving unconscious and automatic processes,

which as the findings from ample research bear out, are fundamental drivers of human behavior. In

doing so, we explain how experience with offending increases offense-related knowledge and skill

and, as such, how offenders “learn on the job.” Second, we intend to demonstrate the value of using

virtual environments to improve the study of offender decision making. We show how this approach

offers a series of new possibilities to study offending behavior that could lead to a step-change in our