Robbery Types

Being a part of group three, we collaborated and chose Robbery Investigation as our crime for the project. Learning in class from Locard that there is always an exchange when individuals come in contact, we felt that robbery would be a great choice being that robbery is defined as the theft or attempted theft, in a direct confrontation with the victim or victims, by force or the threat of force or violence.

Along with the act of robbery, you will notice that there are many different motives behind the crime along with many different types of offenders. The primary motivation for robbery is to obtain money, but some exceptions to this statistic are the motives of thrill seeking, peer pressure, and to obtain drugs. Four types of offenders are professional robbers, opportunistic robbers, drug addict robbers, and alcoholic robbers. Professionals usually involve themselves in robberies of large sums of money and this is how they support themselves annually. Opportunistic robbers are usually young and steal small sums of money from those who they see as vulnerable. Drug addict robbers steal in order to support their habit and are very selective when choosing their victims. Lastly, alcoholic robbers randomly plan their crimes while under the influence and are very careless when it comes to planning an escape and choosing victims.

There are five types of robberies that we have found and used through our research. You have robbery of persons employed in positions placing them in charge of money or goods, robbery in open areas, robbery on private premises, robbery after preliminary association of short duration, and robbery after previous association of some duration between victim and offender.

The robbery of persons employed in positions placing them in charge of money or goods can occur in offices, jewelry stores, department stores, and the most popular, banks. These are usually classified as commercial robberies. These types of robberies consist of 6% of all robberies and are normally conducted at the end of a workweek, during the morning or early evening and the targeted places are typically located by main roads or highways for easy escape.

Robbery in open areas is generally classified as "street robbery". Street robberies can be on streets, in alleys, in parking garages, in public parks, and mostly occur on weekends in urban areas. In this type, the victim is a randomly targeted, vulnerable pedestrian/stranger for their money or property, and the offender uses force or threatens to use force or violence.

Robberies on private premises consist of home invasions, residential burglary, and residential robbery. Robbery on private premises is also known as home invasion because the attacker is breaking into your home or place of residence, these are seen as some of the most frightening cases because they violate your space where you should feel comfortable and protected.

Robbery after preliminary