Burglars on the job

Drawing on extensive interviews with 105 active burglars in St. Louis, Missouri, Burglars on the Job presents offenders' perspectives on the process of burglarizing a residence. The authors, Richard T. Wright and Scott H. Decker, consider motivations for the decision to burglarize a dwelling, explore how and why the burglar selects targets, examine how the offender executes the break-in, discuss strategies for searching a residence, and detail the ways in which the burglar disposes of stolen goods. Unlike earlier studies of residential burglary, which collected data from a small number of offenders within a prison environment, this ground-breaking work examines a larger sample of unincarcerated burglars, all identified and contacted without the assistance of criminal justice agencies or authorities. As a result, Wright and Decker were able to obtain more honest and forthright responses from the offenders, and they were able to study the burglars' decision-making processes within the context of streetlife culture. The authors found the offenders' needs to support activities such as drinking and drug-taking often shape the decision to commit a residential break-in, and that burglars