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Using Crime Science for Understanding and Preventing Theft of Metal from the British Railway Network

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Using Crime Science for Understanding and Preventing Theft of Metal from the British Railway Network Using crime science for understanding and preventing theft of metal from the British railway network matthew ashby Thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of PhD in Crime Science (UCL) of the University of London in 2016 University College London UCL Department of Security and Crime Science cb Some rights reserved This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ STUDENT’S DECLARATION I, Matthew Ashby, confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that this has been indicated in the thesis. Matthew Ashby August 2016 3 ABSTRACT Metal theft has emerged as a substantial crime problem, causing widespread disruption and damage in addition to the loss of metal itself, but has been the subject of little research. This thesis uses the paradigm of crime science to analyse the problem, focusing on thefts from the railway network in Great Britain. Two theoretical concepts are used: crime scripts and the routine-activities approach. Police-recorded crime and intelligence data are used to develop a crime script, which in turn is used to identify features of the problem a) analysis of which would potentially be useful to practitioners seeking to understand and prevent metal theft, and b) for which sufficient data are available to make analysis practical. Three such features are then analysed in more detail. First, spatial and temporal distributions of metal theft are analysed. Metal theft appears to differ from other types of acquisitive crime in ways poten- tially useful for prevention, for example in clustering outside (but close to) cities, and in exhibiting significant repeat victimisation over a longer period than found for other crimes. Second, the potential crime-prevention value of the market-reduction approach is analysed by testing for clusters of thefts close to the locations of scrap-metal dealers. Scrap-yard locations are found to be a significant predictor of local thefts, controlling for metal availability, area accessibility, and density of population and industry. Third, the involvement of organised crime groups (OCGs) in metal theft is tested. Due to the difficulty of defining and measuring organised crime, multiple approaches are used: all show OCG involvement to be rarer than official estimates previously suggested. The implications of these findings for practitioners are discussed. The thesis also considers the relevance of the results for the use of crime science and the analysis of OCGs. This thesis is 62,698 words long. 5 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This work was supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) [grant number EP/G037264/1], whose generous funding allowed me to benefit from the perspectives of practitioners and academics at conferences and meetings in several countries. Whatever the quality of the research presented here, it is much better than it would otherwise have been without the exchange of ideas that this funding made possible. Thank you to Herve´ Borrion, Kate Bowers and Taku Fujiyama for their supervision and guidance, both in relation to this thesis and in navigating so much of the academic world. Thank you to James Goodson, Gill Murray and Alison Evans of British Transport Police; Steve Welsh, John Power and Ian Janes of the National Crime Agency; Damian Pharoah of the Environment Agency and Anne Patrick of Ordnance Survey for providing the data used in this thesis. Just as importantly, for their advice and comments on early versions of the work presented here, I am grateful to Steve Welsh (again) along with Jacques Zachmann of the European Commission, Jose´ Perez of the International Union of Railways, Susanne Kufeld and Matthias Stresow of Deutsche Bahn, David Ransom of People United Against Crime and everyone else involved in the Pol-PRIMETT II project funded by the Prevention of and Fight Against Crime (ISEC) Programme of the European Union. I am grateful to Gloria Laycock, Nick Tilley and Richard Wortley for having the vision to establish the Security Science Doctoral Research Training Centre (SECReT) at University College London (UCL), which provided the collaborative and supportive working environment in which I completed this research, and to Vaseem Khan for being so helpful in managing practical matters. Thank you also to all the staff and students of the UCL Department of Security and Crime Science who have provided advice and assistance during my study, especially Jyoti Belur, Shane Johnson, Aiden Sidebottom, Amy Thornton and Lisa Tompson. David Antal and Ariane Berthoin Antal of the Berlin Social Science Center, Veronique Coiffet and Andrew Otto of Passau University and Mitya Genova were kind enough to provide quiet spaces for me to complete this thesis – for that I am very grateful. 7 Trips made for the completion of this thesis Stockholm to Sa n Fra nci sco to Atl Manchester anta The Hague Berlin Brussels Passau Paris Ljubljana Sofia Lisbon to Ch ristchurch 8 9 Although academic materials are increasingly available online, thank you (in alphabetical order) to the Berlin State Library, the British Library, Imperial College London, the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, the London School of Economics and Political Science, the National Police Library, Nottingham Trent University, Passau University, University College London and the University of Warwick for providing well-equipped libraries with knowledgeable and helpful staff. Thank you also to the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) for providing the excellent Copac and eduroam services that make it possible to find and use academic resources across institutions, and to Google for producing the excellent Google Scholar search system. Most importantly, thank you to my parents (for everything) and to my wife Denny for always supporting me, even when long hours have taken me away from her. PUBLICATIONS Some of the material presented here has previously appeared in the following publications: Ashby, M P J, K J Bowers, H Borrion, and T Fujiyama. 2014. The when and where of an emerging crime type: the example of metal theft from the railway network of Great Britain. Security Journal advance online publication 13 October. doi:10.1057/sj.2014.43 Ashby, M P J and K J Bowers. 2015. Concentrations of railway metal theft and the locations of scrap-metal dealers. Applied Geography 63:283–291. doi:10.1016/j.apgeog.2015.07.005 Ashby, M P J. 2015. Is metal theft committed by organised crime groups, and why does it matter? Criminology and Criminal Justice advance online publication 3 September. doi:10.1177/1748895815603777 Material from this thesis was also presented at the following conferences: American Society of Criminology annual meeting, Atlanta, • November 2013. Pol-PRIMETT II annual conference, London, February 2014 • ⇤ Streets, Crime and Transport seminar, London, February 2014 • † Pol-PRIMETT II annual conference, Lisbon, October 2014 • ⇤ American Society of Criminology annual meeting, San Francisco, • November 2014. International Union of Railways (UIC) expert panels, Paris, • December 2014 and February 2015† International Crime and Policing Conference, London, February 2015 • ⇤ Exploring New Ways to Tackle Metal Theft meeting, London, • February 2015† This conference was attended mainly by crime-prevention policy makers. ⇤ This conference was attended mainly by crime-prevention practitioners. † 11 12 Pol-PRIMETT II meeting in Sofia, March 2015. • † Environmental Criminology and Crime Analysis symposium, • Christchurch, June 2015 Pol-PRIMETT II meeting in Berlin, July 2015. • ⇤ International Crime and Intelligence Analysis conference, Manchester, • February 2016.† CONTENTS 1introduction 25 1.1 Definition of metal theft 26 1.2 The structure of this thesis 26 1.3 The contribution of this thesis 30 2theoreticalframework 33 2.1 Introduction 34 2.2 Crime Science 34 2.2.1 Abuse 35 2.2.2 Misunderstandings 37 2.2.3 Contextual concerns 37 2.2.4 Ethical concerns 38 2.2.5 Crime science in this thesis 40 2.3 ‘Good-enough’ theory 40 2.4 The decision-making criminal 42 2.4.1 Rational choice? 44 2.4.2 The normality of sub-optimal decision making 45 2.4.3 Being crime specific 48 2.5 Crime scripts 49 2.5.1 Constructing a crime script 51 2.6 The routine-activities approach 55 2.6.1 Offenders and their handlers 59 2.6.2 Targets and their guardians 61 2.6.3 Places and their managers 64 2.6.4 Super controllers 66 2.6.5 Control mechanisms 68 2.6.6 Convergence in space and time 70 2.6.7 Using the routine-activities approach to prevent crime opportunities 74 3theproblemofmetaltheft 77 3.1 Introduction 78 3.2 Why has the problem arisen? 79 3.3 Metal as a vulnerable target for theft 80 13 14 Contents 3.4 Types of metal theft 85 3.5 The costs of metal theft 86 3.6 Metal theft from the railway network 86 3.7 The vulnerability of the railway network 87 3.7.1 Primary and secondary delays 88 3.7.2 Low redundancy 93 3.8 The importance of studying railway metal theft 93 4previousresearchonmetaltheft 97 4.1 Introduction 98 4.2 Metal-theft targets 98 4.2.1 Forensic identification of stolen metal 99 4.3 Places where metal theft occurs 100 4.3.1 What we don’t know about metal-theft places 101 4.4 Metal theft offenders 101 4.4.1 What we don’t know about metal thieves 103 4.5 Conclusion 103 5data 105 5.1 Introduction 106 5.2 Crime data 107 5.2.1 ‘Live’ and ‘non-live’ metal thefts 108 5.2.2 Geo-coding offences 108 5.3 Offender
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