The utility of the script framework in understanding behaviour

In addition to viewing scripts as a cognitive facility that guides decision making, scripts are also used as a research method to understand decisions by inspecting actions that have been performed or considering actions that could be executed in given circumstances. Borrion (2013) distinguishes between potential scripts and performed scripts. Potential scripts refer to ways in which it is theoretically possible to commit a crime. Performed scripts recount historical information about how crimes have been committed. The use of both potential and performed scripts offer useful methods for understanding crime. The findings that are presented in Chapter 7 and 8 are examples of performed scripts drawn from historical police data. The inspection of patterns in these

performed scripts has the potential to allow inferences about causal processes that govern decision making and action. Consideration of potential scripts could help to identify ways scripts might change in the future including in response to deliberate attempt to block them.

Analysis of collections of scripts encourages the systematic consideration of all stages of behaviour and the identification of the necessary characters (people) props (resources) and actions required to accomplish a task. Comparisons between scripts can inform explanations for differences in

behaviour in different contexts, between different individuals and changes over time.

For example, Morr Serewicz and Gale (2007) found that dating scripts are gendered, female first date scripts contained the pre-date scene of calling friends for reassurance, male scripts did not. The research identified that first date scripts had remained relatively stable over recent decades and that despite moves towards female equality, the gendered elements of dating had changed little.

However ‘dating’ research has been concentrated on Northern European and Western European samples. Cultural comparisons could reveal these Western scripts to be wholly ineffective, inappropriate and perhaps offensive in other societies.

In addition to a detailed description of ‘what happened,’ the inspection of scripts reveals the challenges that are accomplished and the resources that were required for the successful execution of a script. This can help to shed light on the actor’s decision to act, and his decision to perform a specific script permutation over others. It may be possible to draw inferences from exploration of

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the ‘routes not taken.’ Given that the factors which shape an actor’s selection of script can be related to the situation, the CCO offers a potential means to identify and explore the relationships between an actor’s goals, his or her efforts to obtain their goals and the crime situation. There is also a potential to use script analysis in efforts to predict behaviour. Yun and Roth (2008)identified a set of distinctive hostage taking scripts that each led to different outcomes for the hostage (release, execution); identification of early script stages could be used to anticipate likely outcomes for different scenarios.

While scripts appear to provide a useful tool, Borrion (2013) and Ekblom and Gill (2015) have highlighted how researchers have used the concept inconsistently to describe both the behaviour of actors, and events. The latter entails more than a description of one actor’s decision and actions, it also includes descriptions of other actors’ behaviours and situational conditions.

Scripts as a methodology

Borrion (2013) observes that researchers have used scripts at different levels of abstraction. To handle this hierarchy, various researchers have devised terminology to describe the various script elements. However the terminology has been rather inconsistently applied – in many cases researchers have devised their own terminologies to provide clarity to their audiences (Chainey &

Tompson, 2008). This is understandable but can add to the confusion when attempting to compare findings.

Cornish (1994) identified four levels of script specificity: tracks, scripts, protoscripts and metascripts.

More recently, Tompson and Chainey (2011) have revised this typology adding levels that allow scripts to be additionally divided into acts, facets and scenes. Following typologies produced by Cornish and Tompson and Chainey, the following terminology will be adopted to describe scripts, broader families of script and detailed script components. Metascripts represent procedures for undertaking the broadest groups of offences e.g. theft of property and protoscripts represents the level at which sub-categories of offences can be distinguished e.g. theft from the person. Script refers to specific offences that are subdivided by dimensions with the situation (Leclerc, Wortley and Smallbone 2010), this might include aspects of the victim, the location or methods used by the offender. Scripts can be further divided into acts, which represent the main process stages required to complete a script and scenes which are the processes required to complete each act. There is little specific guidance regarding how to divide crime scripts into acts and scenes, leading to considerable variation in how these terms have been applied (Borrion, 2013). Extending the dramatic analogy, throughout this thesis, acts will be defined as requiring a specific action resolution for completion

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and/or notable changes in location or time between acts. Scenes will be demarcated by changes to the characters present and/or small changes in setting or time, scenes that are part of the same act generally take place in the same locale (Dunne, 2012). The division of scripts into acts and scenes is particularly helpful because it encourages consideration of the causal factors that shape each of these different stages, and for some scripts these can vary considerably.

Finally, tracks correspond to different permutations of actions that can be utilised to accomplish scripts and can be viewed as the different routes that are available through the acts and scenes of a crime script, such as robbery with or without the use of physical force. Leclerc, Wortley and

Smallbone (2011) observe that it is at this level at which most situational crime prevention is implemented. Although tracks are distinctive, Tompson and Chainey state that tracks should share sufficient salient conditions to keep them as part of the same script. With complex crimes there may be a myriad of different permutations through which goals can be achieved. This has led a number of authors to realise the question of balance between appropriate levels of generalisations and

allowing for the exploration of meaningful variations in scripts (Wortley in Ekblom & Gill, 2015).

Leddo and Abelson (1986) suggested that all scripts, regardless of their function, could be generalised into a universal script containing the scenes ‘Preparation, Entry, Preconditions,

Initiation, Actualisation, Doing, Post Condition, Exit.’ However commentators have argued that this generic framework is difficult to apply in practice (Ekblom & Gill, 2015). Tompson and Chainey (2011) reduced the universal script to four categories and argued that rather than include pre and post conditions as distinct and separate scenes, analysts should consider the prerequisites and facilitators within each scene. Prerequisites can, therefore, be considered as milestones, sequential

dependencies on which future steps are reliant. The inclusion of prerequisites promotes the consideration of how of causal factors in the situation shape and are shaped by actors performing scripts. In the case of crime scripts, this allows the consideration of how offenders exploit and cope with the conditions in the situation described by the CCO; in fact, it is possible to identify a separate conjunction of opportunity that must be exploited/coped with at each scene (Ekblom, 2003).

Crime scripts

Cornish (1994) first advocated the use of scripts in the analysis of crime, the fact that by their very nature, scripts are context-specific, makes them particularly suited to the call from situational perspectives for a crime specific analysis, "The script concept offers a useful way of developing better accounts of crime commission. By 'better' is meant fuller, more systematic, appropriately crime specific, and helpful for crime prevention purposes." (Cornish & Clarke, 2002, p.48).

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Script frameworks have been applied to the analysis of a number of types of crime including car crime (Copes et al., 2012; Jacobs, Wright, & Topalli, 2003; Tremblay, Talon, & Hurley, 2001), Fraud (Tremblay, Cusson, & Morselli, 1998; Tremblay, 1986) Sexual offences (Beauregard et al., 2007;

Brayley, Cockbain, & Laycock, 2011; Leclerc & Tremblay, 2007; Leclerc et al., 2011) Robbery (Copes et al 2011) and illegal waste activity (Tompson & Chainey, 2011) further examples can be found in Leclerc & Wortley (2014) (Leclerc & Wortley, 2014). Research findings that did not originally adopt script frameworks can also be revisited and interpreted with the lens of crime scripts (as

recommended by Cornish & Clarke, 1994 and Copes et al., 2011).

Using a script framework, crimes can, therefore, be regarded as a temporal sequence, containing scenes that the offender performs to achieve lower level goals that will ultimately lead to a higher level goal of crime commission. These goals can include objectives that positively further overall aims e.g. to transfer property from the victim, but also include so called ‘hygiene scripts,’ these are procedures designed to avoid undesirable outcomes such as sustaining injury or being recognised (Ekblom & Gill, 2015). The script covers all stages of the crime from preparatory steps, through actualisation of the offence to subsequent post crime phases (Cornish & Clarke, 1994, 2008). Crime scripts can vary from the straightforward, crimes with only a small number of acts and scenes and only a few options for how each scene can be performed, to more complex crimes, requiring the accomplishment of multiple acts which, in turn, are comprised of scenes, each of which can be performed in a variety of ways. Other crimes may have only a few scenes but a large range of

options for carrying them out. Research into offender MOs has found little variation in the scripts for certain crime types (e.g. bag theft, Gamman, 2001¹²) and significant variation for other crime types (e.g. vehicle theft, Tremblay, Talon & Hurley, 2001). Within one crime type, variation can range from high tech to low tech scripts. For example, techniques of identity theft range from the theft of utility bills from rubbish bins to the creation of cloned financial websites (Copes & Vieraitis, 2009b). The diversity or uniformity of crime scripts employed for specific crime types may have implications for the identification of newly emerging crime scripts.

The analysis of crime scripts, not only, outlines each of the necessary stages in the commission of a crime, but also, identifies the required props and cast members. Systematic analysis also uncovers the interplay of offenders’ scripts with those of suitable victims, those promoting crime (either consciously or unconsciously) and those with the potential or desire to prevent crime. A

comprehensive application of script frameworks highlights that it is not just the scripts of offenders

12 Gamman uses the term perpetrator techniques rather than crime script.

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that require consideration, attention must also be afforded to the scripts that reveal the mechanics and logistics of the routine activities of everyday, honest life (Leclerc, 2013) and the direct script clashes between victims and offenders, and crime preventers and promoters (Ekblom, 2012b).

Analysis of scripts can reveal the process of offender decision making and therefore, has the potential to inform those tasked with preventing crime, of the stages or scenes in which they can intervene. A script approach embraces the whole process of crime commission and can (and should) be applied to all stages in the commission of crime, from the planning and resource gathering stages through to the concluding steps, such as disposal of tools or selling on of goods. These are all stages in which crime can be made harder, riskier or less rewarding through intervention. Script analysis can identify points of track change and/or failure – where the offender is forced to take a different, more difficult or higher risk track or where the script is aborted without the final ends being

achieved. Analysis of performed scripts can identify the interruptions, obstacles or missing resources that lead to changes to or abandonment of script tracks (Cornish & Clarke, 2008).This can help to understand how and where to block scripts, and potential offender counters to blockages in crime scripts.

Ekblom and Gill (2015) argue that empirical descriptions of offender methods are insufficient to inform crime prevention. They argue that crime prevention intelligence requires explanatory descriptions, such descriptions relate actions to the functions they aim to achieve and information on the causal mechanism that mediate behaviours. Explanatory scripts can also contain information on how behaviour changes over time, such as with age and experience and how scripts evolve in response to longer term environmental changes.

Crime scripts can also be used to anticipate likely offender innovation in response to attempts to reduce criminal opportunity (including displacement). Analysis of crime scripts over a longer timescale can expose the evolution of criminal techniques. Tremblay et al (2001) argue that the structure of available criminal opportunities translates into identifiable offender behaviour patterns.

Changes to the opportunity structure should, therefore, be identifiable in changes to aggregate behaviour.

Cornish (1994) describes different modes through which scripts are elaborated. Scripts are adapted in response to opportunities, obstacles (including crime prevention interventions) and aggregate offender learning. Cornish further argues that, the more hostile an environment is to crime commission, the more likely that adaptations will focus on risk minimisation, in more favourable environments adaptations will be more attuned to maximising rewards. Therefore, the type of

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change identified could be indicative of the cause. This type of adaptation has been highlighted, for example, in relation to drugs markets. If drugs markets are squeezed by law enforcement they are more likely to become closed and risk adverse making it harder to identify and access ring leaders.

Markets, where operators are less fearful of intervention, may be easier to police, at least until the operators become aware of the intervention (Haracopos & Hough, 2005).

2.3.4 Summary

Scripts were originally presented as a cognitive facility that aids effective and rapid decision making to guide goal-directed behaviour. However, the role of cognitive scripts is to organise decision making, they do not replace it. Scripts are also used as a methodological tool that aims to reveal decisions made and the factors that shaped them through an inspection of performed actions.

Inspection of scripts can reveal the temporal sequences within actions, and help to suggest the lower and higher level goals that actors aim to accomplish. The fact that scripts contain cues relating to different situational conditions is directly relevant to situational explanations of crime and can facilitate analysis of the proximal causes that shape offender decisions and actions. Leclerc (in Ekblom & Gill, 2015) believes that as script “is far more than a methodology – it is rather, a journey into the head of the offender during the commission of a crime. It can reveal the offender’s motives and other previously unseen situational aspects, some of which may inhibit the script’s execution”

(see Ekblom & Gill, p.5). However, the extent to which scripts ‘reveal’ such intelligence will depend upon what data is available about offender actions: making inferences about offender intentions, decisions and actions based on limited data is risky.

Scripts have been used to understand offender behaviour but there is also potential to explore crime promotor and crime preventer scripts. In particular, analysis of victim scripts offers the potential to consider the situational lability of target vulnerability.

The hierarchy of different levels of script specificity enables the examination of behaviours with similar purposes that display different actions performed in order to reach them. Finally, the use of script methodologies can help to anticipate potential changes to criminal methods. This can include the identification of crime prevention interventions that can disrupt offender scripts and the consideration of the consequences of blocking specific actions. Script methodologies can also be used to explore the potential impact of changes to routines activities, through, for example, social changes or technological changes, and whether these will facilitate or hinder offenders in reaching their goals. The consideration of potential scripts can, in turn, help identify potential offender adaptations in response to both deliberate and accidental disruptions to crime scripts.

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