If you have issues viewing or accessing this file contact us at NCJRS.gov. Australian I nstit~t~ of Criminology '-. ~ .. \ ARMED ROBBERY JE«llftfte«ll1b>y Deml1mis CiuRllinger Seminar. Proceedings No. 26 .. " .. ," -.1_ .:.• ' ... 119997- U.S. Department of Justice 120009 National Institute of Justice This document has been reproduced exactly as received from the person or organization originating it. Points of view or opinions stated in this document are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official position or policies of the National Institute of AlC Seminar: Proceedings No. 26 ,/L!stice. lSSN 0813-7005 Permission to reproduce this copyrighted material in mi­ crofiche only has been granted by Australian Institute of Criminology to the National Criminal Justice Reference Service (NCJRS). Further reproduction outside of the NCJRS system requires permis­ sion of the copyright owner. ARMED ROBBERY Proceedings of a Seminar Held 22-24 March 1988 Edited by Dennis Challinger NCJRS OCT 30 1989 '... ACQUISITiONS J. Australian Institute of Criminology Canberra, ACT @Australian Institute of Criminology 1989 Published and printed by the Australian Institute of Criminology, 10-18 Colbee Court, Phillip, A.C.T. Australia, 2606. April 1989. Publications resulting from seminars held by the Australian Institute of Criminology are issued in the series Ale Seminar. Proceedings. This replaces the former series Report on Training Project and Proceedings - Training Project. The National Library of Australia catalogues this work as follows: Armed robbery. ISBN 0 642 14015 4. 1. Robbery - Australia - Congresses:, • . 2. Robbery - Australia - Prevention - Congresses. I. ChalIinger, Dennis. II. Australian Institute of Criminology. (Series: AIC Seminar. Proceedings; no. 26): 364.1'552'0994 CONTENTS OVERVIEW 1 Dennis Challinger OPENING ADDRESS 9 Duncan Chappell ARMED ROBBERY OVERSEAS: 13 [_ HIGHLIGHTS OF A CANADIAN STUDY Thomas Gabor [ BANK ROBBERY IN AUSTRALIA 25 - John .Marsden 100 CONVICTED ARMED ROBBERS IN 37 [ MELBOURNE: MYTHS AND REALITY Andros Kapardis [ ARMED ROBBERS - A DETECTIVE'S VIEW 49 Brendon Cole -KEEPING nNE STEP AHEAD 55 l2-a aa 2- r Barry Weston r PREVENTINQ ROBBERY 59 I 2. () 0 03 P Thomas Gabor DID YOU READ ABOUT.... ? 71 [ THE PUBLIC AND ROBBERY Geoff Griffiths I: FEWER GUNS, FEWER ROBBERIES? 77 J 2.0 OOS Len Hingley 12..0 (JrJ,6 [ ROBBERS AT COURT 83 Ivan Potas .... THE SENTENCING PROCESS - SOME 93 [ NOmS ON VICTIM INVOLVEMENT Ray Whitrod PROVIDING ASSISTANCE TO VICTIMS 101 I 2.., () <T a-r [ OF BANK HOLD-UPS Marsha Leeman-Conley and Julie Crabtree r ROBBERY, RESPONSES AND THE FUTURE 111 I ~ () a-fJ ~ l Bill MacRae LIST OF PARTICIPANTS 119 OVERVIEW Dennis Challinger Assistant Director . Australian Institute of Criminology, Canberra Considering its contribution to the volume of crimes reported to Australian police, robbery attracts a disproportionate amount of public attention. This is mostly because the media usually ensure that robbery incidents are well broadcast with their elements of drama and violence. To that extent, little has changed since the Australian Institute of Criminology held its last seminar on this topic in 1977. However, there have been some important changes since then, most notably growing public appreciation that a robbery, especially an armed robbery, can be damaging to the victim, and increasing appreciation by big busmess that vulnerable premises and staff need more secure protection. Those changes ~ere reflected by speakers at the seminar, although the first presentatIons focussed on the phenomenon of robbery as reflected by official records of it. In his opening address to the seminar, Professor Duncan Chappell drew attention to the increases in robberies reported to the police over the last few years, and to the increase in bank robberies in particular. Notwithstanding the increased rates of offending, Australia still has fairly modest robbery rates when compared with those in other countries like the United States of America and Canada, and this is clearly shown in Figure 1. The situation in that last country was the subject of a presentation by Dr Thomas Gabor from Ottawa who described his comJ?rehensive research into robbery. That included not only use of offiCIal statistics and police, court and prison files, but also interviews with victims, imprisoned offenders, and armed robbers who had apparently abandoned offending. Dr Gabor emphasised the importance of seeing robbery in its social context, pointing out how factors such as demographic changes, the use of hard drugs and minority groups can all contribute to robbery. He then went on to describe how opportunity reduction and tougher penalties had led to a decrease in robberies in Montreal, in Quebec State, the site of his research. Interestingly, that State has consistently had armed robbery rates more than twice the national rate - a situation not at all dissimilar from the Australian situation where New South Wales has consistently recorded many more robberies over the years. (.Also apparent from Figure 1.) Dr Gabor's research provided further findings about robbery that appeared to parallel the situation in Australia - as reflected in the recent 1 Figure 1 TRENDS IN ARMED ROBBERY 1974-85 SOD R ~ 250 b e r - Unit.ed State. '1 200 r II. ... Canada t e 150 p e "" - New South r Wale • 1 100 ."'" .. -........ Ill..,. o .- .-... -............ _.. .,... -...... ... o ~",,--.-. o 60 ,..". ... o ._- .,._ •• IIiI __ III ... o ~._.fIIIIIII'_ _a _ ........ •• • It: ...... IPiI .... II --•• - •• - o I I I I 111174 18715 11'1'1'8 18'1'7 1878 lU78 111110 1881 1882 1183 IBM 18U Sources: Gabor, T., Baril M., Elie, D., LeBlanc, M. & Normandeau, A. 1987, Anned Robbery: Cops, Robbers and Victims, Charles C. Thomas, Springfield, Table 9, p. 24; Mukherjee, S.K., Walker, J.R., Psaila, T., Scandia, A., and Dagger, D., The Size of the Crime Problem in Australia, Australian Institute of Criminology, Canberra, Table 4, p. 15. research report from the New South Wales Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research which analysed robbery incidents, and discussed the detection, prosecution and sentencing of offenders as well as describing their characteristics. The Director of the Bureau, Dr Jeff Sutton, discussed this report in an oral presentation which has not been reproduced in these proceedings. The research was based primarily on a randomly selected sample of 537 offences of 'robbery' or 'demand money with menaces' reported to New South Wales police in 1983. That sample split 50:50 between robberies of commercial targets and personal and residential robberies, introducing for consideration the fact that not all robberies conform to the media's stereotypical bank robbery. Indeed, only 9 per cent of the sample comprised bank robberies, however banks were still the most frequently robbed commercial target. 2 The preponderance of robberies in banks has caused. the banking industry to devote considerable resources to tackling that problem recently. Dr John Marsden from the Australian Bankers' Association outlined to the seminar the sorts of issues and approaches being considered by bankers. In particular, he introduced statistics from the ABA's database on armed attacks to which all banks provide information whether or not police are called to the incident. Most Australians would probably not expect there to be bank robberies of which police have no knowledge, but the ABA database indicates this is not so. A recent case provides further exceptional evidence. In that, a man confessed to a bank robbery committed In 1978 but the police had no record of it. Eventually they reconstructed the crime through the bank's internal files (and the man was sentenced to 2 years imprisonment). An important issue that emerges from this is the extent to which robberies from victims other than banks are also unreported, and therefore not included in analyses like those described by Dr Sutton. Notwithstanding that, the ABA database generates findings similar to those in the New South Wales Bureau's study. For instance, the ABA statistics indicate that lone offenders predominate and most attacks produce only modest gains for offenders. In addition, Dr Marsden discussed preliminary analyses of the occurrence of armed attacks on banks with other social factors, including unemployment rates. Such attempts to produce models of the occurrence of robberies were to continue, according to Dr Marsden, in conjunction with the introduction of a formal strategy to reduce the incidence of armed robbery in banks. Further statistical data about robbers emerged from a study of Victorian prisoners sentenced for robbery presented by Dr Andros Kapardis from La Trobe University. The main shortcoming of such a study is, as Dr Kapardis acknowledged, the fact that his sample of robbers could not be seen as representative of all robbers. Indeed, it could be said that the sample is only representative of incompetent and unskilled robbers, who had been not only apprehended but also convicted and imprisoned. They were described generally by Dr Kapardis to be young (under 25 years of a~e), with histories of property offending and showing little evidence of havmg planned their robbenes. This sort of description matched that, provided from his experience as a detective, by Chief Inspector Brendon Cole of the VIctoria Police. Mr Cole vigorously questioned the popular view of some robbery offenders as folk heroes and categorised robbers as 'good', 'bad', 'stupid' or 'dangerous' by providing case-studies.