Question

Patterns

Which do you think is more difficult to establish, a pattern of property crime or a pattern of persons crime? What are potential police responses to these patterns?

Answer 1

Note: This response is in UK English, please paste the response to MS Word and you should be able to spot discrepancies easily. You may elaborate the answer based on personal views or your classwork if necessary.

(Answer) Firstly, labeling a certain type of crime, to be more difficult than solving another crime would generalise the category. Whether or not a crime is difficult to solve would be a subjective matter. In other words, ease in finding patterns in a property crime or a person crime is mostly on a case-by-case basis.

Establishing patterns becomes simpler when the motive is clear or the connection between elements of the case is evident. Property and person crimes differ in motives and the way the clues connect.

Property crime: The motive for property crime is mostly a matter of greed or profit. Since money is the basic reward, it becomes easy to establish a motive. However, police response patterns would differ from personal crimes. This is because; property crimes tend to leave a different paper trail as compared to personal crime. Let us assume a white collar crime where a house owner has been cheated out of his property even though he might legally own it. The white-collar criminal may not hold a gun to the owner’s head but rather forge papers, deceitfully procure the owner’s signature wherever needed and even get his hands on bank records. This quiet crime would leave a trail that would be evident in the public records.

The issue at the stock market in 2007-2008 proved to be similar. There were not blatant criminals but the laundering was evident because of the trails and even the values of the triple-A bonds. It became easy for officials to track the cause and pin the players responsible. The motive was greed and the crime left a paper trail.

Person crime: The difficulty with person crimes is that the motive is always unique to each case. Although issues like vengeance, mental disorders or others might be common, unlike property crimes, one can’t simply assume that “greed” is almost always the reason. It is generally tougher for a cop to find a motive and then establish a pattern.

Elements of communication, personal relationships and even proximity to the perpetrator are key features in establishing patterns. Paper trails might be almost non-existent at times and the psychology might be complex. However, the anomalies of a criminal mind might be evident in the clues and the nature of the crime scene.

For both crimes, the potential police response would mostly be to collect as much data as possible and string the elements that connect together. This way, it becomes simpler to spot patterns and perhaps even recognise a crime before it culminates.