LPRC - CrimeScience – The Weekly Review – Episode 239 Ft. Christina Burton, PhD

Episode Date: June 4, 2026

In this episode of the CrimeScience Podcast, host Alexandra Palomar sits down with Christina Burton, PhD, to discuss an R2P report examining the evolution of the CRAVED framework into the CAPTURED model. Together, they explore how this updated approach helps retailers better understand product vulnerability, offender decision-making, and opportunities to reduce theft through evidence-based prevention strategies. Tune in for insights on how crime science continues to advance retail loss prevention and asset protection.

Hi everyone and welcome to crime science. In this podcast, we explore the science of crime and the practical application of this science for loss prevention and asset protection practitioners as well as other professionals. Hello again everyone and welcome to the LPRC's crime science podcast. My name is Alex Palmar. I'm a research project coordinator here and I'm here today with Dr. Christina Burton to cover her newest article called Expanding Craved to Captured. Hi, Kirsten. Hey, everybody. Thank you for being here.

So we have a few questions. I just wanted to go ahead and start with a quick summary of what the article is and how it's relevant to us. Sure. So the original article that I wrote was Expanding Craved to Capture that was published at LP Magazine. last year. And so what we eventually did was we expanded that article to get published into a journal article most recently.

And so I'm going to mostly talk about the LP magazine article, but I'll also reference this newer journal article that we just recently published. But the basic premise of this is that you may have heard in LPRC lingo that sometimes we describe certain hot products that have what's called craved characteristics. And craved is just an acronym for different characteristics like concealable, removable, available, valuable, enjoyable, and disposable characteristics that make them desirable, right? Or make them targeted by thieves. And my argument in the original LP magazine article was that that can be very limiting to just the theft event.

we know with ORC or larger schemes that it's not just the stealing part that can be problematic, it's also the trafficking and the reselling components later that also can be important to talk about with these kinds of complex crimes is what we call them. And so what I'm arguing is that Captured, which I'll talk a little bit more in a second, might be a better acronym to use to describe all of those key components in a complex crime as opposed to just focusing on the initial theft. And so what Captured does is it alters some of the letters within the original Craved Framework

to instead include three of them that are different for trafficking or for reselling. So, for example, the P represents processable. So the original article that came up with Captured was focused on wildlife trafficking. And so sometimes you might have to convert a live animal, into its byproducts. So that's a processable procedure. So if we're thinking about like an ORC scheme, you know, they might have to remove the product protection technologies on that product

before they can resell it, right? So that's the processable components of the crime. There's also transferable. So how do you actually move the product from one place to another, whether that's to a storehouse where it'll be sold later, or if it's a booster, fencer combo, it might be to their house or apartment, and then they have to then transfer it to the ultimate seller or the buyer that's going to actually get the product. And then usable. So usable tends to focus more on the perishability of products. So if it's a highly perishable product, think like your foods, your beverages, things like that, you have to make sure that it's stored properly or it could rot and then you lose profits, right, if you're an offender. So you have to also make those kinds of

considerations as well. And for those who may not know, Christina, you were in wildlife trafficking, right? That was your dissertation or your focus? Yeah, so that was my original focus when I was going through getting a PhD. And so my dissertation was actually on wildlife law enforcement. So I do have a background in wildlife trafficking. And, you know, it's kind of funny that a lot of ORC is relatable to wildlife trafficking. It just comes whole circles. It's like I never left. were meant for this. I like I like to tell people that you know wildlife trafficking is just a different vertical of the same trafficking steams with retail guns labor all that all that trafficking is all the same just a different vertical. And with this article I really feel like there is a big

connection. Before I would have just kind of laughed and thought you were joking but it's for real. There is a really big vertical there. Yeah and that's what we were trying to do in the journal article too was we actually said you know metal theft and metal traffic. and organ trafficking are related to ORC in the sense that they have very similar characteristics of what offenders are prioritizing at each of those different stages of the trafficking scheme. So there are a lot of definitions that you kind of give in this article. Sure. Some of the ones right after you explained captured, well you started with craved, but then you go into captured,

is structuring properties and bounded rationality and you related that more toward the craved framework. Can you briefly explain what those are, please? Yeah, so craved and captured are frameworks that are derived from a broader theory called rational choice theory within criminology. And there's many different theories of crime, but I'm only going to focus on this one since that relates to craved and captured. And so what it kind of shows is that we all make decisions. And most of the time we think they're rational and sometimes they seem irrational, but unethical. under rational choice theory, even if it seems irrational to us, it is rational to that decision maker.

And so there are two kind of concepts associated with this decision-making process. There are the choice structuring properties. So everybody has this internal checklist of what they're looking for for them to make a certain kind of decision. So a classic example I tend to give when I talk about this to folks is I might put like $20 on the table.

And I would ask the audience, you know, how many of you would be tempted to take this $20, right? Most people are going to be polite and say no. But then I changed the calculation a little bit. What if it's now $100 and I've left the room? Now does that change a calculation of whether you're willing to steal the $100, right? So those are the choice structuring properties. What are the characteristics of the product, the scenario, the people involved that would make you willing to actually do the thing? that's choice structuring properties.

Bounded rationality means that we have limited information of all the things that are happening at any one point in time. So I'm going to make a decision based on the information that I know about. So an example I might give here is that if you have a covert camera in your retail store that is not going to be involved in an offender's decision making unless one of two things happens. One, you point it out before they make that decision. You say, here is a covert camera, right?

Now you've made it overt in that particular sense. Or two, they've had an experience with a covert camera, so they don't know where it is, but it might be in the room or that area, right? So they might include that in their decision making. But for the most part, if you don't see it, you're not going to think about it, just from a broad standpoint. So that's kind of a simplification of what bounded rationality is. So from a craved or captured perspective,

we're going to make a decision to commit a crime based off of the characteristics that are in front of us and what we know about that situation. We don't have infinite knowledge. We don't know everything, but we're just going to make that decision. So from a crime prevention standpoint, if you can manipulate the conditions that are present,

maybe you add a guard in that location, or you change the layout of that store so that it's no longer enticing from an offender standpoint, you now have prevented it because you're impacting those choice structuring properties, or you're adding information to that offender's decision-making. And does the choice structuring properties and bounded rationality, does that tie into both captured and craved,

or is that just a craved thing? It ties into both. It's just that captured derived from craved, and so it came, you know, it kind of was the pathway of started with rational choice theory, from rational choice theory, craved, developed, and then from craved, it was captured, right? So it just followed that same pathway.

And I was really intrigued by the choice structuring properties in the article because it seemed like that would be unique to most everyone. I mean, so would bounded rationality because of the perception of your environment. But how would someone go about a scientist or a retailer or a practitioner go about figuring out those choice structuring properties? Yeah. And so you can kind of do it in a couple of different ways. The preferred option, right? Because we're talking about human decision making is to talk to a fence. So we have this offender program where we do talk to offenders and we do ask them questions about what makes this enticing things of that nature.

And so you're really getting an in-depth discretion and description of what is the actual decision-making process in that offender's mind, right? And so then what that tells you is, okay, they are going to prioritize these characteristics when they're deciding on whether to steal, right? Now, we would love to also interview offenders that traffic and resell, those are just a harder population. to get to. It's not like we're not trying. It's just harder to get access to those kinds of groups. And so, but again, theoretically, you would want to interview those offenders to figure that decision making. You can also do certain studies that kind of capture a proxy of that, meaning finding out what your hottest product of loss is might give you some clues as to what offenders are prioritizing in that particular moment. So for example, if there were batteries that

were commonly being stolen, you know, go to the actual location and see, okay, they're small. Okay, so the smallest battery, so they might be concealed. Okay, is my EAS system working? You know, are they able to remove it fairly quickly? Okay. You know, you can process through like, okay, what is an offender doing to get this out of the store? What are they prioritizing, right? That might be an option too. And then you keep talking about covert cameras and EAS systems and whatnot, but then you mentioned that Captured has evolved from Craved,

and part of the problem with Craved was that it didn't address different scenarios that would possibly encompass EAS. Wouldn't the removability and availability portion of the Craved acronym, encompass EAS? So are you asking, you know, in terms of would EAS try to influence those kinds of options? Like if a product was removable or available, wouldn't EAS play into those two things? So EAS probably plays more into concealability and removability. If we're going to pretend for a moment that booster bags don't exist, right?

So these are these aluminum lined bags that people can put it in. and might disrupt the signals from EAS. We're going to pretend that doesn't exist for a hot second. But what EAS is trying to do is detect if something is being hidden, right? So it tries to prevent the concealability part and subsequently prevent the removability part to some extent, right? Because it's sending out a signal, hey, something's being removed, right? But from an availability standpoint, you know, the placards might be a better option

where you limit what's on the shelf, right? because it's not as plentiful, and it requires someone to bring a placard to a checkout booth to get the product, right? So you're limiting the availability of the product, right? But each solution that we have in the labs that you are using in your stores or your supply chain distribution centers, they probably operate under one of these kind of characteristics, right? And so we have to be extremely tailored to, you know, what is the actual problem? How are those specific offenders actually thinking about, you know, that product or that crime itself. And then you need to make a very tailored decision of what solution is actually going to prevent that situation. And then you also

keep mentioning where a product is placed. Why is location so important in this, in this situation? Yeah. So if we're talking about, you know, one of the things we often say from a situational crime prevention tactic is you don't want to place your high-risk items towards the front of the store. And the reason you don't want to do that is because there's a very short distance between an exit, right, and the location of that product. And so what you do, if you move it deeper into your store, is there might be more barricades put in place or speed bumps that might make it more challenging for a, for a, you know, offender to take that out of the store. So we would say that that might be a removability kind of prevention if you move it deeper into your store. Now, the other

thing to think about with location, right, if you have tracking on the product, let's say you have RFID or GPS trackers, if we're talking about from a supply chain perspective, offenders may know this and they may try to counteract some of that. But what you're trying to do is you're trying to prevent concealability in that case because you're not concealing the location of those offenders. Right. And so again, when we're talking about, you know, different solutions that may change depending on if we're talking about the thief, right, that booster or if we're talking about the trafficker or if we're talking about the reseller, right? They may have different calculations that they're making of what's important to me in terms of what I'm.

need to do with this product, right? Or one of the characteristics that are really, really important, which we talk about also in the journal article, that, you know, the thieves are probably going to prioritize concealability, availability and removability, right? Because they want product to be removed so that they can sell it to the next man and then they make their profit that way. But a reseller is going to prioritize, you know, is this a valuable product? Are people buying this product? You know, is it available from a broad perspective, right? They're not concerned as much. on concealability anymore because they're trying to sell it. Yeah.

Right. So we also have to be careful about who are the actors that are participating and operating with this product. Which you kind of go ahead and define as fensers and boosters. Can you briefly make that distinction? Yeah. So boosters are your thieves, right? They're the ones that are going into your retail storefronts or they could even be cargo thieves,

right? And we tend to view them more in the retail front end space. But they're basically stealing the product. And then a fencer, right, or the fence, right? if we're talking about from an ORSEE perspective, they're the ones that are then selling that stolen product, and it can be through illegitimate or legitimate channels, right? So they could either sell it back into legitimate supply chains if they wanted to.

They could sell it on different online marketplaces or flea markets, right? So there's just pumping that illegitimate product or stolen product into legitimate channels, or they can do it back channels, right? They don't have to go through those legitimate ways. You can sell it to their buddies or things like that. And so those are the different kind of categories that I kind of thought about in the article. But that's not anything new. ORC working group talks about it all the time.

So I didn't take that. You know, I didn't create those, but, you know, I give full credit to them. Shameless plug. Yeah, of course. ORC working group. So then what can practitioners do with all of this information? You've given a lot of great information here, but can you condense it all down a bit? Yeah.

So if I were to kind of summarize, you know, both the journal article and the, this article. What I would say is it's really important that when we're doing crime prevention, we are really thinking carefully about what is actually driving that particular crime in particular. Because if we really understand decision making at the offender level, that helps us prevent a very tailored approach rather than, let's try everything and hope it works, right? That's not very cost effective to your businesses. If you're just trying all the latest and greatest tools and technologies and the hopes that maybe it'll stop something. And so what I kind of want to people to take home, right, is that you guys are doing investigations normally anyway. As part of that

investigation pool together like what are the commonalities among these ORC cases, right? Are they all targeting the same products or are these different groups? Okay, if they're different groups, what are they targeting? What are their strategies? And then you can create very tailored crime prevention techniques to kind of address it. And I'll give an example, right, of a classic gift card scheme, right? So you might have individuals first steal the cards, write down the numbers, put the cards back, and then they check the balances of those stolen cards to see if you're

any balance has been added to that card and then they can then steal that balance right from that particular gift card. So we think about it like sure they might be the same person doing this action but you can prevent it at different stages. So at the stealing stage you might make gift cards more inaccessible to people. Maybe it's a placard that you have to bring to the front in order to do so or you prevent the number of that gift. card from being visible until point of sale, right? And so maybe it's not visible on that card until someone officially makes a purchase, and then the code is activated and thus provided to the consumer, right? So that type of prevention prevents that piece, right? If you look at it from the

back end, right, someone's checking the numbers to see if a balance pops up, what a gift card company could do, right, is they could shut down a card that is being checked before balance has been added, right? Because there's no reason to check a card until there's been a balance added, and so it deactivates that card, and so it can't be purchased at sale, right? So those strategies are going to target two different groups, but it's the hope of maybe disrupting that whole scheme that will reduce, you know, the gift card fraud schemes that are happening. So that's just one example, you know, that you really have to think carefully about how those specific groups are doing the crime, because then you can disrupt them specifically. And are there any limits with

this approach? It just takes some time, right? It takes some time and you got to collect enough cases or interview enough offenders or work with law enforcement that may have some of these information or work with the LPRC. You know, that's what we do as well when we're interviewing offenders as we try to get this information. So sky's the limit really. It just, it takes a little bit more effort than, you know, the quick and easy. What's the quickest ROI on a solution that we might put in place? But it seems like it would save quite a bit of time. in the back end or at least. Oh, absolutely, yes, because now you're, it's kind of like, you know, maybe you have a headache. You could take aspirin, right, but maybe you might take a migraine

medication that's very specific for that receptor and that does a better job than the general, you know, out, you know, pain reliever, if you will. And in this case, it's the same thing, right? You're trying to find out what's that specific, you know, receptor that we have to target from an offender perspective rather than kind of just a blanket, you know, one-size-fits-all. Sometimes the one-size-fits-all is what you need. That's okay. But, you know, we often say it's often better to go specific rather than general because you're going to get probably a better return on what you're doing if you're targeting specifically what's happening. Yeah. Well, fantastic. I appreciate your time. For those who have not had a chance to visit the article, you can find it at loss preventionmedia.com

or visit our website at LPRsearch.org or our knowledge center. There's multiple places for you to be able to find this article, but I definitely recommend it to those who haven't given it a peak yet. But for those who are listening, thanks again, and please tune into our next episode of Crime Science Podcast. We post every week. Thanks, Christina. Bye, all.

Thanks for listening to the Crime Science Podcast, presented by the Loss Prevention Research Council. If you enjoyed today's episode, you can find more crime science episodes and valuable information at LPRsearch.org. The content provided in the crime science podcast is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for legal, financial, 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 Loss Prevention Research Council.