From: lambert@spectrum.cs.unsw.oz.au (Tim Lambert)
Subject: Re: Guns and Rape
Organization: CS&E, Uni of NSW, Australia
	<LAMBERT.92Apr6232400@nankeen.spectrum.cs.unsw.oz.au>
	<1992Apr6.175312.20838@CSD-NewsHost.Stanford.EDU>
Date: Tue, 14 Apr 1992 16:14:40 GMT

>>>>> On 6 Apr 92 17:53:12 GMT, andy@SAIL.Stanford.EDU (Andy Freeman) said:

> (Tim Lambert) writes:
>>I think the reason that the "deterrence theory" seems so plausible, is
>>that we assume criminals think like ourselves.  If I were a criminal,
>>I would be deterred by the thought of encountering an armed victim,
>>but I'm not a criminal, so my thought processes do not give much
>>insight into the way criminals think.  Unfortunately, criminals do not
>>think of the future, are just the sort of people who will not be
>>deterred by the potential consequences of their actions.

> While we can safely ignore Lambert's "If I were a criminal ...", we
> can't ignore "I do ..." from actual criminals.  (BTW - I suspect we
> can also disregard his "criminals do not think of the future" as
> elitist fantasies as well,

If non-criminals form an elite in the US, your crime problem must be
worse than I thought.

>  as that opinion doesn't seem to have any independent basis.)

The theory was advanced by Kevin Langston.  Are you suggesting that we
are the same person?

> See Wright and Rossi's "Armed and Considered Dangerous" for one
> study of how criminals react to the threat of armed victims.
> Summary: they are deterred.

I take it by this that you mean the following:

1. Most (or at least a majority) of criminals
2. are often deterred from committing crimes
3. because victims might be armed.

(These would all seem necessary if deterrence is going to explain the
drop in the rape rate in Orlando.)

The UNSW library does not have a copy of Wright and Rossi's book, so I
am forced to rely on Kleck's "Crime Control" paper, and book reviews
to find out what it says.

The only statistic reported by Kleck that might support Andy's summary
above is the following "43% of felons who reported committing a
violent crime or a burglary said they had at some time in their lives
decided not to do a crime because they knew or believed the victim was
carrying a gun".

1. This is a minority of criminals
2. who were deterred ONCE in their careers
3. by a victim KNOWN to have a gun.

So Andy's summary is wrong on all three points that it implies.

Furthermore, the primary reason why most of the criminals carried
firearms was not for the purpose of committing crimes, but for
self-defence.  35% of criminals reported that they thought regularly
or often about the possibility of getting shot by their victims, so
some of these criminals may have armed themselves to defend against
armed victims.

It is also interesting to note that the statistic "42% of prisoners who
reported committing a violent crime or a burglary had run into an
armed victim" (on page 12 of Kleck's paper) contradicts his claim (on
the same page!) that "being threatened or shot by a gun-wielding
victim is about as probable as arrest and substantially more probable
than conviction or incarceration".

To see this, consider what would happen if the chance of encountering
an armed victim was the same as being imprisoned.  In a given
criminal's career, one of these events must occur first.  Since they
are (by assumption) equally likely.  50% of criminals will encounter
an armed victim before they are imprisoned.  That is, 50% of criminals
imprisoned for the first time will have encountered an armed victim.
Wright and Rossi's study did not restrict itself to first time
imprisoned criminals, but also included criminals who had been
imprisoned multiple times.  These should be even more likely to have
encountered an armed victim, so we should expect the percentage in
Wright and Rossi's survey to be much more than 50%.  Since it is less,
we can conclude that chance of *imprisonment* is greater than that of
encountering an armed victim.

Tim