Cleaning up your act: Forensic awareness as a detection avoidance strategy

Eric Beauregard and Martin Bouchard

Journal of Criminal Justice, 2010, vol. 38, issue 6, 1160-1166

Abstract: Purpose Although rational choice researchers has investigated how offenders successfully commit certain crimes, there is a lack of research looking at the factors explaining the use - or not - of certain detection avoidance strategies. This study introduces the concept of "forensic awareness" as a detection avoidance strategy, and proposes to examine the effect of disinhibitors, target selection behaviors, and acts that may potentially leave evidence at the crime scene on its use.Methods Factors influencing forensic awareness are tested using logistic regression models on a sample of 222 rape events collected from offenders incarcerated in Canada.Results Offenders exhibit less forensic awareness when under the influence of drugs and/or alcohol. However, offenders who show some form of target selection are more likely to take forensic precautions. Finally, offenders who break and enter in the victim's residence, and undertake specific sexual acts during the crime are also more likely to exhibit forensic awareness.Conclusion Despite the increasing use and knowledge of forensic evidence by law enforcement, offenders are inconsistent in their forensic awareness and they direct most of their efforts toward protecting their identity, neglecting to either destroy or clean up DNA that could be recovered at the crime scene.

Date: 2010
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0047-2352(10)00172-8
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jcjust:v:38:y::i:6:p:1160-1166

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Criminal Justice is currently edited by Matthew DeLisi

More articles in Journal of Criminal Justice from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().