Situational Peer Dynamics and Crime Decisions

• Author: Greg Pogarsky,Timothy C. Barnum
• DOI: 10.1177/00224278211070498
• Published date: 01 August 2022
• Date: 01 August 2022
• Subject Matter: Original Research Articles

Situational Peer

Dynamics and Crime

Decisions

Timothy C. Barnum

1

and Greg Pogarsky

2

Abstract

Objectives: To investigate how peer dynamics, specif‌ically interpersonal con-

versations between a potential offender and a peer, contemporaneous with

a crime opportunity, inf‌luence perceptions of sanction certainty and social

costs. Methods: Data are analyzed from randomized experiments and hypo-

thetical vignettes embedded within a nationwide, online survey (n=1,275).

Vignettes were presented for three distinct crime opportunities, drunk

driving, f‌ighting, and insurance fraud. Results: The f‌indings suggest that

respondents adjust two core decision-making perceptions—the perceived

certainty of being legally sanctioned and perceived social costs such as

stigma or embarrassment—in accord with the content of verbal communi-

cations from peers. There is evidence for this both between and within sub-

jects. Conclusions: The study underscores the importance of accounting for

both physical and social features of the situational con text for crime in

models of offender decision making. Implications are drawn regarding the

social milieu for offender decision making, and the broader criminological

relevance of choice principles.

1

Department of Criminology, Max Planck Institutefor the Study of Crime, Security and Law,

Freiburg, Germany

2

School of Criminal Justice, University at Albany –SUNY

Corresponding Author:

Timothy C. Barnum, Department of Criminology, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime,

Security and Law, Freiburg, Germany.

Email: tbarnum@tamusa.edu

Original Research Article

Journal of Research in Crime and

Delinquency

2022, Vol. 59(5) 535–573

© The Author(s) 2022

Article reuse guidelines:

sagepub.com/journals-permissions

DOI: 10.1177/00224278211070498

journals.sagepub.com/home/jrc

Keywords

decision making, deterrence, rational choice, peer dynamics, social context

Considerable advancements on offender decision making have materialized

since Nagin’s (2007) inf‌luential call to move choice center stage.

Knowledge has grown on emotional inf‌luences (van Gelder, De Vries,

and van Der Pligt 2009; Barnum and Solomon 2019; Pickett, Roche, and

Pogarsky 2018), behavioral economic heuristics and biases (Loughran,

Paternoster, and Weiss 2012; Pickett 2018; Pogarsky et al. 2017, 2018),

the coherence of sanction risk perceptions (Barnum, Nagin and Pogarsky

2020; Thomas, Hamilton, and Loughran 2018), and enhancing the realism

of decision making research with videos and virtual reality (van Gelder

et al. 2019). These subtopics ref‌lect an increasingly granular focus on the

contexts and situations in which opportunities for crime arise.

The immediate context for crime consists partly of environmental factors,

such as lighting, disorder, land usage, and neighborhood conf‌iguration (e.g.,

Clarke and Cornish 1985; Nagin, Solow, and Lum 2015; Chalf‌in, Kaplan,

and LaForest 2021). But people also contribute to this context, as instigators,

co-offenders, peers, bystanders, and law enforcement (Haynie 2001; Warr

2002; McGloin and Nguyen 2012). We are interested in the interpersonal

dynamics that ensue during opportunities for crime. Research on peer inf‌lu-

ence ascribes the behavioral concordance among associated individuals

partly to attitude and value transmission over time. Yet less is explicitly

known about how peers affect judgments about the consequences from

crime while people face an opportunity to offend. Research has shown

that structural attributes of a social conf‌iguration, such as density or size,

indirectly inf‌luence contemporaneous judgments about the consequences

from offending (Haynie and Osgood 2005; McGloin and Rowan 2015;

McGloin and Thomas 2016). However, more active forms of inf‌luence

also take place when group members exchange information with one

another during an opportunity for crime (McCarthy et al. 1998; Granic

and Dishion 2003; Weerman 2003; Sirakaya 2006).

This study investigates how verbal communications—situation-relevant

statements between two or more people—among peers, affect contempora-

neous judgments about the potential legal and extralegal consequences asso-

ciated with an opportunity to offend. Several theoretical expectations were

developed by integrating concepts from the peers and decision-making

536 Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 59(5)

literatures. Data were analyzed from randomized experiments embedded in

a survey containing hypothetical vignettes for three distinct crime opportu-

nities: drunk driving, f‌ighting, and insurance fraud. Findings suggest that

although an actor may enter a criminogenic situation with a general sense

of the risks and costs entailed in offending, the social setting presents addi-

tional dynamics that help shape these judgments for contemporaneous deci-

sion making.

Social Context for Offending Decisions

A persistent debate in criminology concerns whether associated individuals

behave similarly to one another because of selection or inf‌luence. Under the

selection perspective, the behavioral concordance among aff‌iliated persons

results because likeminded people associate with one another (e.g.,

Gottfredson and Hirschi 1990). However, associated individuals also

behave similarly because they inf‌luence one another (McGloin 2009;

Pyrooz et al. 2021). Normative inf‌luences emphasize value systems and/or

subcultures inculcated through processes of social learning (Burgess and

Akers 1966; McGloin and Thomas 2019). They are grounded in core

human instincts to seek acceptance and avoid rejection. These processes

do not require a conf‌luence of persons and circumstances since they

unfold over time. Moreover, the longstanding behavioral correspondence

between associated individuals exists irrespective of the time they spend

physically together (Warr 2002).

A distinct form of peer inf‌luence occurs during the more immediate sit-

uations in which opportunities for crime unfold. According to Osgood et al.

(1996), associated persons form a social conf‌iguration, wherein the primary

impetus for crime and delinquency can reside. Consistent with this, geo-

graphic areas where people convene, in bars and restaurants or for other

commercial activity, tend to have more crime than residential areas do

(e.g., Roncek 1981; Weisburd, Bushway, Lum, and Yang 2004). Some of

this situational peer inf‌luence is passive, as when the mere presence of

others during a crime opportunity, apart from any interpersonal interactions,

inf‌luences the decision maker (Hochstetler 2001; Gardner and Steinburg

2005; Matsueda 2013). For example, McGloin and Thomas (2016) extended

Granovetter’s (1978) threshold model for collective deviance (see also

McGloin and Rowan 2015). The authors grounded a perceptual deterrence

survey in two social contexts, a college football game, and a concert in a

park. The vignettes randomly varied the number of co-offenders participat-

ing in disorderly conduct and vandalism. They found that with more

Barnum and Pogarsky 537