| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立臺北大學 === 犯罪學研究所 === 98 === Previous research on automobile thieves has focused on their early criminal experience, auto theft techniques, and resale of stolen vehicles. Few studies have ever explored the relationship between auto thieves’ decision making and life style. The current study interviewed five experienced car thieves who have been convicted and sentenced to jail for automobile theft. Four of them are still serving sentences during the interviews. It aims to understand: firstly, how the auto thieves begin, continue and stop their theft career. Secondly, do the social economy, car market and criminal code changes have any impact on their decisions and adaptations to commit car theft?
After comparing the data from in-depth interviews and crime prevention/investigation measures, some conclusions are drawn.
First of all, the weak bonding with families has influenced their early deviance to both early starters and late starters. All of the five interviewees have some characteristics of low self control, such as juvenile theft, drug use, pleasure seeking, strong sexual and material desire, and pastime obsession. They initially committed trivial crimes, namely larceny and drug use, before becoming car thieves. They learned the techniques from deviant friends or‘mentors’in jail. Some of them state committing car theft in groups. Their criminal activity allows them to gain relatively high rewards with low cost and low risk. The nature of car theft will reinforce and lead them to a repeating criminal ‘career’. They view their criminal activities as an ‘occupation’. In order to maximize criminal gains and satisfy their personal desires, they will also commit burglary and car abduction. In spite of their chronic criminal involvement, they still concern about certain social normality such as their dutiful as children and friends.
In Taiwan, the stolen car market had its golden years in the 1990s when the stolen car market guarantees a large profit given the poor car security and huge demands of stolen cars. However, the profits for car thieves are decreasing due to the price drop, better locks, and stiffer legislations. All of above, in addition to the car parking behavior in urban areas, leads to a transfer from car theft to combine with car abduction beginning at early 2000.
The center of these interviewees’ life is family and theft. Some car thieves will choose more private residency, such as mansions with security, in order to avoid police attention. They seldom use stolen cars for commutation. Non-professional thieves who view their criminal activities as labor, not career, will not pay special attention to car market and price. They tend to be familiar with the crime investigation strength and weakness in order to avoid being caught. They only show late regret when they finally realize that car abduction constitute more serious offence than car theft and their serving sentences will be longer than expected. In their opinion, tougher sentences will deter criminals. They also agree that better design and security will result to a transfer to stealing car partials and other makes. According to the research findings, I suggest that the police department should integrate public sector intelligence system to speed the recording and data sharing process. Situational crime prevention techniques, when appropriately applied, will also reduce the rewards and increase the risk.
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