LPRC - CrimeScience Episode 37 – Breaking Down Porch Piracy & Metal Theft ft. Dr. Ben Stickle

Episode Date: January 23, 2020

In this episode, our featured guest Dr. Ben Stickle (MTSU) discusses porch piracy, metal theft, and more, with co-hosts Dr. Read Hayes (LPRC) and Tom Meehan (CONTROLTEK). The post CrimeScience Episode 37 – Breaking Down Porch Piracy & Metal Theft ft. Dr. Ben Stickle appeared first on Loss Prevention Research Council.

Hi everyone, welcome to Crime Science. In this podcast, we aim to explore the science of crime and the practical application of the science for loss prevention and asset protection practitioners, as well as other professionals. Co-host Dr. Reid Hayes of the Loss Prevention Research Council and Tom Meehan of Control Tech discuss a wide range of topics with industry experts, thought leaders, solution providers, and many more. On today's episode, Dr. Ben Stickle, Associate Professor of Criminal Justice Administration at Middle Tennessee State University, discusses property crime including metal theft and porch piracy, crime prevention, and much more. We would like to thank Bosch for making this episode possible. Take advantage of the advanced video capabilities offered by Bosch to help reduce your shrink risk. Integrate video recordings with point-of-sale data for visual verification of transactions and exception reporting. Use video analytics for immediate notification of important AP-related events, and leverage analytics metadata for fast forensic searches for evidence and to improve merchandising and operations. Learn more about extending your video system beyond simple surveillance in zones

one through four of LPRC's zones of influence by visiting Bosch online at boschsecurity.com. All right, well, welcome to another episode of Crime Science, the podcast broadcast from the University of Florida, an LPRC broadcast, and I'm joined as every episode with Tom Meehan, longtime APLP practitioner and VP at ControlTech. And today our special guest is Dr. Ben Stickle from Middle Tennessee State University. And Ben and I have been conferring recently on some mutually beneficial research that we think can not only be rigorous research, but help drive how we operate out there in LP and with law enforcement, but most importantly, have a greater outcome.

So Ben, welcome today to Crime Science. Thank you for having me. Okay, so the way Ben and I have started conferring is like what we're doing in our networking with like-minded criminologists, and by like-minded, anybody that's listened to any episode of Crime Science knows that we're talking about environmental criminology by and large, where we're looking at how the natural, social, digital environment shapes human behavior, enables human behavior, even encourages human behavior differences. And so the idea is that by doing rigorous research, particularly in the field, we can better change the environment or things about the environment to maybe change behavior to our benefit and not spend quite as much time on criminality and the grassroots of why an individual is deviant or more deviant. And so in this case, too, we've been talking specifically about theft of precious metals or in particular copper, since it affects

all types of places from residential and commercial environments and certainly in retailing in addition to the commercial environment, those members of ours that sell copper. And so looking at those dynamics and what are some opportunities to suppress and reduce that problem. And then the same thing with porch piracy. And again, with our almost 70 retail chains, almost every one of them is involved in omni-channel and is delivering packages. And they want to get along with their customer. They want to feel valuable. And so what can we do to get better there? So Ben, with that long-winded setup, can you tell me a little bit about how you think about, let's go to porch piracy. How do you think about it? And what are you trying to find out to learn

more about porch piracy, porch theft, package theft that might inform better practice? Well, sure. I appreciate that introduction. Falling in line with what you said, trying to understand how the environment influences behavior to some degree. And what we've realized is that there's very little information known about porch piracy. It probably caught my attention the same way it has most of the listeners, is that you've seen a humorous video on YouTube or something like that of someone either stealing something or there was one that caught my attention a couple of Christmases ago where someone broke a leg in the process of stealing some packages. And I got thinking about this crime.

And this is a difficult crime to stop. It seems like it's fairly easy to do. It doesn't take a lot of skill to really walk up and snatch a package off someone's front porch or somewhere like that and get away. And the more I began to look at this, the more I realized that no one had really done a lot of research on this. And coming from a practitioner background, I really wanted to be able to answer just some basic questions. So who is doing this? How is it really done? How often is it done? And some other questions. And what I quickly found out was there's not a lot of answers to some of these questions. We don't know how often this happens.

answers to some of these questions. We don't know how often this happens. It's not a specific category of theft that's kept or recorded by most either police or even in the industry. I think it oftentimes is included with just a general loss in the last mile or something of that nature and not always delineated for how that loss or that shrink actually occurs. And so I had to turn my attention to what I did know. And what I did find was a bunch of videos online about, you know, surveillance cameras watching these thefts occur. And so I kind of turned my focus in that direction and looked from a prevention perspective and from what we call crime scripts. And so that would be looking at how offenders tend to operate inside of an environment. And so I reviewed these videos to try and find out, you know, how they approached,

what they did when they got to the front porch, and basically how they took the package and escaped, looking for different ways we can interrupt that script. So how can we take action that would interrupt the theft from actually either occurring before, during, or after the actual theft. And so that's really the genesis of where I started looking at this. There's certainly a lot more to do, and I started with looking at some of the videos about how it actually occurs. That's fantastic. And again, our listeners will note that we're always looking for multiple measures

and multiple methods that we can learn more about the problem and how to better solve that and how our tools work, how they actually work. So I love the idea like you're doing, looking at video, understanding what's going on, how these people are working, who's doing it, how, who, what, when, where, why, and how of the problem. What are some initial things, Ben, that you're seeing in the video data that you're reviewing as far as who's involved and how are they working these thefts? Sure. That's a very good question. And unfortunately, the research that I did is probably not really applicable to say this is generally the type of person who's doing this because we picked and chose videos that met a number of criteria. And so it's not, you know,

a random study that's going to give us, you know, a real strong outcome. So some of the demographics I'll say with basically that caveat is for the videos we watched, this was true, but this may not be a trend across every community and across countries. But we noticed some interesting things. There was a very even split between men and women, which was a little unusual given that generally men commit more crime than women. So it was actually about 50-50 for men and women who were in the videos. And that was a little bit different, like I said, than a lot of other traditional types of crime. This universally occurred during the daytime, and we weren't really sure whether that's an effect of maybe videos take better image during the day, or it could be that, you know, if you're walking around the neighborhood at night,

you can't see the package, and therefore you're not going to walk up to a house to steal it. But we noticed they were all done during the day, about 50 split for men and women. There were teams that would work sometimes. Usually the other person was like a driver, so they'd pull up to the house and the other person would get out. So we began noticing some unusual, at least what we think are different circumstances like that where it occurred. Excellent. So what are some of the dynamics you're seeing in the data set that you've got? As you say, it's got some range restriction, it's purposeful, it's not a randomized, large randomized sample. But what are you seeing in your sample? What are some of the actions that you're seeing that may be systematic, may be telling, and may be

something that could help us more rapidly detect the problem or individuals starting before they're even starting or as they are and things like that? Is there anything coming out of your data in that way? Well, some of the more interesting facts we didn't actually report on. So when I, you know, publish a paper at this level, it needs to be supported by the data that's in it. But there were some things that I noticed that will inform my thinking moving forward. For example, the videos generally just showed the theft. And there were a few videos that had several seconds before and after, but people would just basically take the clip of the theft and post it on YouTube.

I would love to have seen what happened before. And I preface my comment that way because there were a few videos that would have, you know, a minute before and a minute after. And in some of the videos, we would see people kind of drive by a couple of times. Maybe they'd see a package, they'd drive by, they'd turn around, they'd come back. We saw this with a few folks who were walking as well. They'd kind of walk by the house, see the package, come back by, they turn around, they come back. We saw this with a few folks who were walking as well. They kind of walked by the house, see the package, come back by, look again, and then approach. So it's possible that there is some casing going on where they're kind of looking to see who's around, who's at home. They might be driving purposely through neighborhoods. We saw at least one video, and again, we didn't report on it

in this current study because it was just the one time, but we're pretty sure we saw this car following closely behind a delivery vehicle. And so we have some concern that there might be people who are more organized and are actually following behind the delivery vehicle a few minutes behind, but then going up to each house and taking some of the packages. So that's definitely a concern. We did see some folks who were using what we termed as a dummy package. So it looked like it was a small empty box, or maybe they had a clipboard with some type of paper on it. They would approach the house and look around, take the package that was there, and then leave. Our thought process is that maybe people, if they were caught, so if the neighbor was home or if the homeowner saw them on their front porch, they could then pass off and say, well, I'm delivering this other package

or something of that nature. So there is, to some degree, in addition to people who can just walk by and swipe a package very easily, there appears to be another group of individuals who are a little more organized, putting some thought into this. One video, for example, had a delivery service jacket on. Whether that person was employed by said service, I have no idea. But they were clearly just out stealing packages. So there is some effort by some more complex theft, so to speak, to systematize this, make this more effective if, in fact, someone was to stop them. The other thing that we noticed is generally people seem to approach the property

fairly slowly. So they would drive and park in the front or often, I think about a quarter of the time, actually pulled in the driveway, which I thought was interesting, get out of the car and walk rather slowly to the front door. They would take the package and their retreat to their exit would be a little bit quicker. So maybe something to look for is from a neighborhood perspective, is anyone who's approached a house and then kind of runs away quickly. Of course, that would get most of our attention, but definitely something we should consider. So those are just some of the things that jumped out from the research. No, that's good stuff. And I know we've put together a little matrix of what we think using situational crime prevention from Ron Clark and others, but come up with a matrix designed specifically for, in this case,

torture, package theft, piracy, to start. How do we look at what's good, better, best, maybe? And this is our going in. This generates our hypotheses to start to test in a small way and then going larger. But it starts with something that you mentioned that you teased out, and that is, But it starts with something that you mentioned that you teased out, and that is if a bad guy, if the offender, if the victimizer doesn't know a bike or driving by or whatever it might be, or live nearby in a corridor in a multi-residential environment or commercial environment, that they don't know that there's a package present. And then further, if they do notice a package, that it doesn't look like it might be all that valuable or worth their time. And then we go from there. So that was pretty significant. And so that's where we're always looking. How do we triangulate your data with others, ours, and so on to, all right, this seems So that was pretty significant. And so that's what we're always looking at.

How do we triangulate your data with others, ours, and so on to, all right, this seems to be telling a story a certain way. What are the implications here that we could start to test some countermeasures along that line? Let me go over to you, Tom. What are some of your thoughts about what Ben's doing, again, with, say, copper, with porch piracy, or in some of his work? Any thoughts there? So, first, you know, congratulations on the book. I haven't had a chance to read it, and I'll get to the metal theft in just a minute. I wanted to just focus on porch piracy. Have you seen any type of countermeasures or any type of deterrence that's working, whether it be camera position, signage?

Is there anything that seems to be slowing this down or deterring folks in the videos that you're seeing? That's a very good question, and again, a difficult one to answer with the data that I had. So I thought it was interesting that cameras did not seem to affect anything about this crime, right? Every single one of these that I looked at, almost 70, were clearly recorded on video. And so at least in those cases, the thieves either were not aware or didn't seem to care that the cameras were present. Now, the difficulty is because of the study design, it's hard for me to say, well, maybe cameras do make a difference, and that's why I don't have any of those thefts on video. But it is interesting that cameras, even a lot of these appear to be coming from a doorbell camera, didn't seem to slow down the thieves, so to speak. And I think that, as Dr. Hayes said, the best thing would be to conceal

the package or item so it's not as obvious. We found that there were fewer thefts the further back from the roadway that the house was. So if your house is further away from the street, I guess it's just less likely for someone to see a package that's up there on your front porch. Similar concept, the smaller the package, the less likely it was to be stolen as well in the small sample that we had. So being able to conceal the package is really important. At least that's my primary thought here. So whether that is just setting the package behind a bench or something that maybe you have a planter, a plant that's on your front porch, setting it behind there, or anything you can do to kind of conceal the package.

Even if you just had an open top box, for example, that didn't have a lock on it, you just set the package inside of it. Someone from the street wouldn't see that. And so, again, you're changing the environment dynamics and probably reducing the likelihood of crime because someone would then have to go up to every single porch looking to see if there's a package. And that effort probably would not be taken on by a thief. Not all thieves, not all situations, but that would probably be really helpful. So I'm not really sure how cameras will play into this. Again, I use cameras to get my data, so it's very biased in that. I do have some questions how effective cameras actually are,

and I do wonder, as they proliferate in society more and more and more, if people will just continue to ignore them, so to speak, and continue taking these efforts. It doesn't seem to have effect with this, but I'm not sure how it might work with other areas. And throughout your research, and this might be a quick yes or no, did you look at the phenomenon of any of these apps or YouTube or Facebook groups where all this information is being consolidated and almost, in some cases, glorified? It becomes fun. Have you seen a trend in app usage? So I know that Ring has their own app and then there's Nexta. There's many

apps where it consolidates these videos and in some cases arguably uses it to generate revenue by advertising dollars or share with law enforcement. Did your research, did you plan any of that or did you just get videos from wherever they were available? We just got videos from wherever they were available. We didn't do a very deep dive into the social aspect of sharing videos on Facebook or using the neighborhood apps to communicate. apps to communicate. We do discuss that that might be helpful. We think there's very likely, you know, a porch pirate, if you will, enters a neighborhood, they're very likely to hit several homes in that neighborhood, we think. And therefore, it might be helpful to notify other residents and community members that this is going on actively so that people can be aware. But I

wasn't able, at least at this stage, to really look at how it impacts it. I do think that there is a great awareness of this crime, and a lot of it is because these videos can be very comical. We've seen some videos where people booby trap boxes and things like that, and they get hundreds of thousands of likes. So there is an interesting social dynamic to this that we haven't thoroughly investigated yet. So I guess that probably the answer is still what this research study is. Was there any look at, did a locked gate, if you had a gate that you had to open, did that change the way it worked? A lock to, you know, some sort of a barrier to imply

trespassing? I know that's come up questions to me. I've seen videos where people are, you know, forcing open a gate. Was there any, in your video research, any transition or any change of behavior if there was a gate or a locked gate or a barrier to get to the package? That's a really good question. And previous research for other types of crime and trespassing would say in general that a gate and a fence is very helpful to deter people from entering the property. We found gates and or a fence in five of these cases, and none of them did it deter anyone. Either the gate was unlocked and they just went right in.

A couple of cases, they just jumped over the fence. And in one case in particular, the front porch had a – just the front porch had, like, iron bars on it. And the thief simply got a tree branch and coaxed, if you will. It took about 10 minutes to get the box close enough to the bars that he could then slide it through and walk off with it. So we didn't see that gates or fences necessarily deterred this, but I would want to have a larger sample before I said adamantly whether that was effective or not. And then in your research, were you able to, because you may not have been able to, determine where these videos were from? Is there a demographic component here that drives it one way or another? No, we really weren't. Just talking amongst the, we had four people who reviewed these videos,

talking amongst ourselves, we felt like it seemed like quite a few from a West Coast type environment, just background looking at some of the types and styles of houses and trees and things. But that was really, it wasn't a research question per se, and we don't really know. It just struck us that there seemed to be a lot from that side of the country. But again, it was very difficult to tell in some cases and see anything to really give us a lot of firm indication for that. You know, it sounds like, too, in our, you know, in reading through the initial report that Ben's got, and Ben graciously came into Gainesville, and we got to spend the day with him and confer and share ideas and research and tour the venues and things. But, you know, right now we're sort of at the exploratory phase,

and so I really, really like the questions that you're posing, Tom. And it's an issue that we have in research, you know, is always the sampling, we start there. And so it's pretty restricted in that we don't have this mix of all these places that have a package that's either visible or not. And then now if it's, say, visible, then what measures are in place and then do we see? So we just don't have that heterogeneity, that difference, that variance there to see before or after. So, but what happens in this, at this phase is, is an incredible exploration and saying, okay, well, here are things that we think we're seeing. Here's things that we're seeing together and not seeing and so on. But

in this case, these are all events that happened. So we don't, so whatever was deployed didn't work. But you all know that, again, anybody on this podcast, and I know Tom and Ben know this, and it's dosing too. Like, do cameras work or not? Well, what's it look like? Where is it? What are you doing to prime it? What's been the offender's experience with cameras and on and on? And so, how do we do these things and do them better? But I did want to touch real quickly on another thing I thought was fantastic you brought up, Tom, and that's this, you know, the ring or other neighborhood or community collective action. You know, does this work or how would we make it work or work better? Those are really good research questions that have real validity,

and I think that's something that as we try and work with our members, and we include many, if not most of the guys that are delivering to your homes, our homes, I think we have the opportunity. Does herd immunity work? Does group immunity or collective action work? And, Ben, you teased out a great point. Well, they don't seem to go in a neighborhood or a complex and take one. They may take more than one. And so if you knew that there was an attempt made in that local space

or place, could that alert help others in the near term? Much less now that community is alerted and then maybe something comes to help in the longer term. But that's just good stuff. And I want to ask you, Ben, who all are you working with on your research? And how does it work at MTSU in your research and you're working with undergrads and grad students? Maybe you could kind of talk a little bit about how that works and how you work with the students that you're mentoring and helping to develop on research. that you're mentoring and helping to develop on research? Yeah, I've really enjoyed working with students.

I left a successful career in public safety looking to really work with students and to help them. And it's been really encouraging to find students both at the undergraduate and the graduate level who are interested in actually answering some of these questions and it's nice to see them get excited and get engaged with it and I really enjoy teaching them you know one on one how to think about crime from an environmental perspective and really see that that blossom and take on so this was kind of the genesis of at the time an undergraduate student came to me with this thought and said we worked on this for quite a while. She's now a graduate student about to graduate soon with her master's and has done some additional work on this topic that we hope to publish soon. But we incorporated another undergraduate

student, just a very exceptional student, very good at what he did and we got him involved and I needed a little bit of help with some of the math side of it and to evaluate some videos. And my wife teaches math, and so we were able to get her involved to do some of the statistical analysis. So we had this team, so to speak, and we looked at the videos independently and categorized them and ranked them and identified things. And then we had my wife help and do some statistical analysis to say, you know, are we seeing the same thing to make sure that we're actually seeing the same thing? Because when we look at video and you interpret it, we often see different things. And so

some things we saw very close to the same and other things are very difficult, such as sometimes the age of an individual was hard for us to agree on. And so by doing this, we're teaching the next generation of people to think in a research context, to look for answers, and to kind of stand back and take a large view of what's going on and then to kind of zoom into a specific problem and apply techniques and theory to actually help answer the question. And, of course, what's so exciting for me and what I really wanted to do and I'm pleased to see is that this research doesn't stay stuffed up in a university somewhere, but that it actually gets out to those who can actually apply it to make some changes, to companies who deliver, to companies who sell, to the police

who investigate these types of crimes, to neighborhood watch groups who are trying to prevent them, so that they can who are trying to prevent them, so that they can actually be useful to prevent crime. So I certainly would rather prevent it than to, you know, respond or have to investigate it later. So it's been a really neat experience to help people, some students, to come through this process and to find things that they're interested in and to learn on a hands-on way how to prevent crime. That's great. And the fancy term is translational criminology, right?

We're taking something from the lab to practice, S2P, science to practice. And you can rest assured that we're ginning up now to start to move your initial paper and with a little summary, an action summary for our members in our S2P, you know, where we're going to be putting it out in our working groups, make it part of a webinar, hopefully with you, and then also something that we put out at our theft summit and at the impact

conference in October. So that's all huge and critical, like you're saying, to take research that's either suggestive, directional, or even somewhat is very actionable. So I appreciate that part. One other question I had was, what does it look like as far as getting the resources that you need to conduct your research? We know that that's a big part. It's not about the money. It's always about the money. So what are sources or ways that you all can help get some of the resources you need with your students and you and others in conducting your research?

Sure. Well, yes, you mentioned money is always the issue unfortunately. So there's a small degree that some time to be able to look at these issues is important. And the way that works in academics is usually there's a little bit of funding which helps release some time for me to actually focus on this and maybe for some students to do it as well. For this specific issue, in addition to a little bit of funding, a very important component of this is actually

tracking where and when this happens. So to my knowledge, there may be one police department in the country that I'm aware of that really keeps track of what we're terming here porch piracy. Otherwise, it just falls into a general category of theft that might include anything from shoplifting to taking gas to stealing something from someone's house to stealing a purse. And so there's not a distinguishing type of theft that this falls into. So it's very, very difficult to track from a statistical standpoint when this happens, how often it happens,, very difficult to track from a statistical standpoint when this happens, how often it happens, who the victims are, is anyone ever arrested for it, and things like

that. But that's not the only issue. The other issue is, and the next study we'll have coming out soon also addresses this, what do people do when they're victims of porch piracy? And initially what we're finding is only less than a quarter even reported to the police. So there's a huge issue with this type of crime occurring. The police don't know about it. And if they do, they don't have a system to track it very well to allow us to look into it. And so we're left not knowing much about the crime. And so in addition to, you know, having some resources to help research it, having some numbers about it would be very

helpful too. And so companies who do any type of fulfillment, whether they're just handling delivery aspect, last mile omni-channeling, or actual sellers themselves who have some data on this would be really helpful to kind of look at and say, where is this happening? What are the trends? When is it happening? Is it a certain type of package? And some of these details that we really need, you know, cooperation from folks who want to help us look at this issue to kind of get some of that information. And then we can really start to move on understanding when it occurs and where and other questions like that. That's excellent. Good feedback. And like you say, you know, the resources to get out there and collect the data, move around, travel and things like that are what we're talking about,

but just as critical and sometimes more so is what you're talking about, access to data, but just as critical and sometimes more so is what you're talking about, access to data, to video feeds, to events. And like you say, there's a lot of problems and issues with trying to get data from official records since it's just not coded that finely. We were hoping with, you know, as we move from the normal UCR to NIPERS and so on, that we would have a little more definition there. But that's all very helpful. And hopefully our listeners to see, look, this is what we need. We always need good data, but the data need to be finer and finer and finer cut so that we can get to more detail to help look for opportunities to deter and disrupt these offenders. Tom, let me go over to you. I know you had some thoughts around metal theft, copper theft, anything there from you? Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, I think the porch piracy is fascinating. I also think the videos bring it to light and kind of make it a viral subject. I mean, I literally every day see it, but metal theft is something actually throughout my career I dealt with and have just a couple questions on, but, and certainly I'm no expert on it. Today, what is, what is, if you can classify it, the biggest place where metal theft is occurring? Well, let me bridge these two topics together as I answer your question and to continue off what Dr. Hayes said. So the best prevention techniques are very specific. In fact, they only really work if they're specific, which is why I like to look at specifically package theft as opposed to just theft in general.

And the same is true for metal or copper theft. And so it also is a field where we have the exact same problem because we just don't know hardly anything about copper or metal theft. We have some raw data from some insurance companies looking at people who file claims for metal being stolen. But that's really about all that we get, and those are generally numbers presented as if this state has a higher proportion than other states. And so same idea. The police don't generally keep track of metal theft separately, and if they have, it's only been very recently in the last couple of years. And so we don't really know a lot about metal theft, kind of in the similar vein as we don't know a lot about our package theft either. Now, to answer your question, where does it occur more, that's very difficult. Anywhere there's lots of metal that has low guardianship and so by that we mean there's not a

system there to either a person who watches it or a motion sensors or a camera or something like that tends to be where we see a lot more of this so looking at air conditioners that are set in alleyways or looking at power stations substations that are not monitored on a regular basis or an abandoned house tends to be where you see a lot of metal theft. So places like that, where there's a decent amount of metal that is not observed or guarded well, tends to be where we see it more. But again, I'm going to say with the caveat is we think, right, because we don't have a lot of data on that either. Um, because we don't have a lot of data on that either.

And my 2nd question, which is you answered actually another question I had by by saying that on the classification and the record keeping my guess. My 2nd question is, do is there any jurisdictions or anywhere where scrap yards are required to keep type of records that upon shop would to help deter it in your experience? would to help deter it in your experience? Yes, the short answer is yes. Most states have moved to legislation requiring scrap yards to keep a variety of information about the metal that they purchase. Still not sure how effective this is. In fact, I have another data set that I'm working with right now to take a look at this. Very conveniently, I was able to get two years of metal theft data before this law was passed and then two years after. So we'll actually be able to really see is there a difference in the rate of theft once some of these requirements have changed. But the requirements vary greatly by state. So

some states will pay you in cash if you have an ID. Some states don't require an ID to sell metal. Some states require a check to be mailed to the address on the driver's license 14 days later. And so it's really kind of all over the board by state for what the requirements are. And so trying to find out if any of these requirements do work and if so, which ones they are, is definitely a question that needs to be answered. Because there's also a degree to which some of these rules and regulations kind of hamper business. So there are a couple of states, and I think they've backed off of this, that required a scrapyard to hold the metal that they purchased for sometimes up to 30 days in case it was stolen for the police to come in and investigate. Well, the problem from a business perspective is the price of copper and other metals changes hourly and definitely daily. So you could purchase copper for one price, and if you have to hold it

by law for 30 days, you could lose money in that way. So there has to be a way to balance the ability of companies and organizations to actually effectively run a business, yet still prevent the crime from happening. So teasing out what policy works is going to be very important as we move forward, because that is a crime that kind of comes and goes with popularity. And we're kind of at a low point at this time. But I do think that it will rise again. And hopefully we'll be better ready from a policy perspective to know what works the next time. I appreciate that. Good stuff. And I think one thing I want to call out very quickly was I know that Ben and I are both trying to incorporate, leverage routine activity, that perspective as well as rational choice. But all different theory tools that we might have out there, frameworks to make sense of the world, but make sense of crime, and most importantly, what can we effectively do about it? And so when you're talking about, well, you've got a desirable

or suitable target like copper, because the dynamics are there's constructions up in XYZ areas, and the demand goes up, and therefore the price goes up. But then you combine that, like you said, with a, it was poorly guarded, it was vulnerable, it's in an alleyway, it's low light, there are no cameras or humans there and so on. So guardianship is low and things like that. And now you've got this likely or motivated offender that is aware of it

or comes in and opportunistically wanders across it. So those components come together in place in time. And so we're looking at, okay, how do we disentangle that crime script that what all do you have to go through here to find it, take it, turn into cash or whatever it might be? And then what are the intervention points? So I really appreciate that, Tom, that question, tease that out. And Ben, thanks for including that. We're always trying to make those points to help us understand. Go ahead. And let me mention something real quick that I thought was interesting that you just talked about that. So when I, with a metal theft, I actually went out and interviewed people

in the field who were engaged in this actively. So active ethnography, crime ethnography, if you want to call it that, we actually went out and interviewed and watched people. And one of the consistent things they said, I asked them, I said, well, you know, how does any of this affect you? You know, if there's a dog, if there's a camera, what if the price is high and low? And what overall from the actual thieves who were actually going out and doing it, what I found is that a fence, a dog, a camera would cause them to slow down a little bit. They might try and come in from a different angle.

They might wait until the neighbor went to bed, something like that. So it just altered sometimes the time, so they slowed them down a little bit. And then the other thing that I thought was interesting is they said that when the price was higher, sorry, when the reward was higher, they just took more risks. So they might go out and steal one air conditioner, but if the the reward was higher, they just took more risks. So they might go out and steal one air conditioner, but if the price was really high, they might go out and take two or three tonight. And so the price changed what they were willing to do and how risky of a behavior they were willing to take, which I thought was interesting. I've not seen that in a lot of

literature, a lot of research, but we forget sometimes it's not just about, it's not to say yes or no, will someone commit a crime or not? But sometimes the price and the other circumstances dictate what they're willing to actually do to get that item or to commit that crime. And I thought that was interesting. No, it is. Rational choice is so messy. And we know while there's some rationality to it, like, like hey I could get money or I could get more money now or I know where this is that I could make money and things but it's pretty bounded or restricted as we know from the research and and like you say that these the components the

calculus here but the inputs that go in they they are all dependent on each other and they change and that's why we talk so much like like you know, about situational crime prevention. But that that situational effort that we make or the effort we make on that type of environment, it's still going to be responded to differently or differentially by different people. All right. Well, I really enjoyed the conversation today. And I want to thank Dr. Ben Stickle from Middle Tennessee State University, Tom Meehan, of course, from Control Tech, and our producer here for Crime Science Podcast, Kevin Tran.

And really want to thank mostly, of course, as always, our listeners. And please, if you've ever got any suggestions about Crime Science, the podcast, what we should talk about, who we should talk about it with, anything we can do to prove and get you the information that's going to help you get better and better at reducing crime and loss, we're here for you. So signing off from Gainesville, Florida. Thank you. Thanks for listening to the Crime Science Podcast presented by the Loss Prevention Research Council Thank you. or other advice. Views expressed by guests of the Crime Science Podcast are those of the authors and do not reflect the opinions or positions of the Office of Prevention Research Council.