Strange Interactions: University of Crime and Game Substitution Theory

It is a truism that crimes and their causal effects are most difficult to single out for particular causal attribution.

For example, we know from what offenders tell us that prisons serve as a university of crime (although, strangely, criminologists have never examined this properly). We know the the Internet also allows offenders to share modus operandi information

Sutton's Game Substitution Theory is to date, arguably, the most compelling explanation yet for the otherwise unfathomable 15 year long fall in crime. What criminology needs to do is to develop methods and knowledge in understanding how to gauge the benefits of certain crime facilitators for offending and weigh that against the "good" that the facilitator causes in reducing crime.

Criminology needs also to both tighten up and expand the scope of its definitions. For example, the Internet may facilitate offending offline - but cyberspace is itself a virtual environment where offline facilitators (such as printed hacker "zines") can facilitate online offending. So facilitators can also be environments as well as objects, substances and people.

I see that Nottingham's notorious Gangster Mr Colin Gunn is in the news regarding how his Facebook page has been used to intimidate people on "the outside". Tautologically, Mr Gunn's time spent checking his Facebook page will have either reduced or not reduced his offline-offending. Perhaps he took he eye of the game and that's how he got caught in the real world? Perhaps not. There is a lot of complexity here for criminology to get to grips with.



Lox.