Closing the Route to Selling Stolen Goods: An Idea That Sounds Reasonable, With Thinner Evidence Than People Assume
Start with a simple question. Someone steals a mobile phone. Why?
For most, the answer is not that they wanted one for themselves. They wanted money, and getting money means selling the phone on. If it cannot be sold, stealing it achieves nothing.
That logic is the basis of an idea called the Market Reduction Approach, proposed by Mike Sutton in research for the United Kingdom Home Office.
"Make stolen goods harder to sell, and the incentive to steal should fall with it."
The 2001 report sets out the aim: by using an array of police tactics and interagency interventions to disrupt and reduce each type of market for stolen goods, the approach seeks to make stealing and dealing in stolen goods more difficult and risky, and therefore a less attractive way to make money.
What the research found, against common assumption, is that the relationship between theft and stolen goods markets cannot be properly understood through the simple idea that demand leads to supply by theft. In many cases it is thieves who create markets, by continually offering stolen goods to shopkeepers and other members of the public.
The report calls this stealing-to-offer, and finds it more common than stealing-to-order.
Source: https://popcenter.asu.edu/sites/g/files/litvpz3631/files/problems/burglary_retail/PDFs/crrs08.pdf
How Many Kinds of Stolen Goods Market Are There
The 2001 report identifies five main market types.
First, commercial fence supplies, where thieves sell stolen goods to commercial fences operating out of shops, such as jewellers, pawnbrokers and second-hand dealers.
Second, residential fence supplies, involving the sale of stolen goods, particularly electrical goods, from thieves to a fence, usually at the fence's home.
Third, network sales, which often begin with a residential fence. Goods pass along a chain of friends, each adding a little to the price until a consumer is found.
Fourth, commercial sales, where commercial fences sell stolen goods on for profit, either directly to an innocent consumer or to another distributor who believes the goods can be sold again.
Fifth, hawking, where thieves sell directly to consumers in places such as pubs and clubs, or door to door.
A sixth type was added later, in the guide Sutton wrote for the Center for Problem-Oriented Policing in 2010: eSelling, meaning the sale of stolen goods through private websites and online auction sites, which gives thieves access to buyers they would never otherwise reach.
That guide also stresses that no one market type is more serious or important than another in terms of the role it plays in promoting theft.
Source: https://popcenter.asu.edu/sites/g/files/litvpz3631/files/problems/PDFs/stolen_goods.pdf
What Was Actually Done on the Ground
The Home Office funded two pilot projects, and a team from the University of Kent evaluated them, reporting in 2004. The report calls the two areas North Town and South Town.
What both did alike was invest heavily in gathering and analysing intelligence on their local stolen goods markets, a substantial shift away from traditional policing priorities. North Town went so far as to assign a team of two sergeants and ten constables to intelligence work on this alone, and employed an experienced academic as a project researcher.
The concrete tactics were these.
First, a voluntary registration scheme for second-hand shops. Participating shops recorded details of the article purchased and of the seller, sometimes including a photograph of the seller with the goods. A team of dedicated officers worked alongside Trading Standards, visiting shops regularly. This resulted in thirty-five people being charged with theft offences.
Second, a voluntary scheme asking pub landlords to report suspicious selling. This drew almost no response, because the project had little leverage and landlords had no business incentive. As one landlord put it, it is difficult to police a conversation.
Third, sweeping the classified advertisements. Both towns scanned newspaper and internet listings for phone numbers appearing suspiciously often. In North Town, one target's number was found advertising seven vehicles and three vehicle number plates within two months of listings. South Town ran the operation for nine months and identified fifty-two repeat advertisers, of whom only three were deemed to merit further enquiries, with no results forthcoming. The programme was discontinued as too resource-intensive.
Fourth, intelligence and surveillance operations targeted at residential fences, which absorbed considerable resources.
Fifth, property marking.
Sixth, public awareness campaigns. North Town posted a leaflet to every household, ran a pub poster showing a woman in a cell after buying a camcorder from a man in a pub, warning that buying stolen goods carries up to fourteen years, and another aimed at younger people showing a teenager with his head in his hands in a burgled room, asking who has his games console now. There was also a poster competition in secondary schools.
Source: https://popcenter.asu.edu/sites/g/files/litvpz3631/files/problems/stolen_goods/PDFs/Haleetal2004.pdf
And What Came of It
Begin with the money, because it is the clearest figure. North Town spent just over 32,000 pounds on marketing-related activity alone. South Town spent over 200,000 pounds on marketing, which included employing a public relations company, and a further sum of just over 27,000 pounds on a market research company.
The measurable result of that campaigning was this. A survey found that 60 per cent of respondents had heard of the project, but most of that group recalled only the property marking element.
As for the effect on crime, which was the actual goal: in South Town recorded domestic burglary fell significantly after the tactics were adopted, but the force as a whole saw similar reductions, making it questionable whether the improvement was attributable to the project. In North Town there was no evidence of reductions beyond those seen across the rest of the force, either for domestic burglary or for other burglary.
The report's conclusion states it plainly: for many reasons it has proved impossible to demonstrate the impact of these projects on crime rates. One example given is that handling cannot be isolated from other areas, because the illegal drugs market and the stolen goods market overlap.
The report adds that while the quantitative results may be disappointing, the qualitative outcomes are much more promising, not least in what was learnt about intelligence gathering and analysis, about the nature of the markets, and about multi-agency co-operation. It also warns that the approach carries risk, because resources are invested with no guarantee of any decline in acquisitive crime.
The lessons the report sets out for anyone following suit are four. Interventions must be devised to suit local circumstances, because one size does not fit all. Those involved must weigh the resources needed against the likely outcome of every intervention they consider. Second-hand shop records can provide useful data on stolen property and a solid base for multi-agency work. And it is essential to consider carefully how, and whether, a marketing campaign can contribute to the objectives of the project before spending large amounts on publicity.
Source: https://popcenter.asu.edu/sites/g/files/litvpz3631/files/problems/stolen_goods/PDFs/Haleetal2004.pdf
Warnings From the Person Who Devised It
What lends this credibility is that Sutton wrote these warnings himself.
He notes that although reducing theft, burglary and robbery by reducing the stolen goods markets that motivate thieves is a simple and compellingly logical idea, the reality is more complex. Stolen goods markets are remarkably adaptable to efforts to close them down, goals are often difficult to achieve, and even where positive results are achieved they can be hard to measure with certainty.
He is blunter still about the most popular tactic of all. The guide states that the majority of the best available research strongly suggests avoiding police storefront antifencing stings, because they require huge amounts of resources and do more harm than good, and can have the unintended effect of encouraging more theft in an area to meet the perceived new demand.
It adds that reports of successful sting operations often fail to fully examine the wider harm they cause, and are often little more than self-promotional how-to manuals.
As for property marking, another popular measure, the guide states that it has never been proved to reduce theft.
Source: https://popcenter.asu.edu/sites/g/files/litvpz3631/files/problems/PDFs/stolen_goods.pdf
Lessons for Thailand
It should be said first that there is at present no publicly documented Thai official data, and no recorded Thai programme, applying this approach systematically, whether to second-hand phone markets or to pawnshop regulation used as crime prevention. This remains a gap waiting to be filled.
What Thailand does have is the legal groundwork, in the offence of receiving stolen property and in the law regulating pawnshops. Those are usable raw materials, should any such work be undertaken.
Were it undertaken, the piece to take first is the one the report found workable: the second-hand shop recording scheme, the cheapest of all the measures and the only one that produced concrete arrests. The thing to be most wary of is pouring money into publicity, since South Town spent over 200,000 pounds and what the public remembered was the property marking, a measure that has never been proved to reduce theft.
The most valuable lesson here, though, is not about stolen goods markets at all. It is about how to read a good idea.
The Market Reduction Approach sounds highly reasonable. Its logic is clear, and explain it to anyone and they will nod along. Yet when it was actually implemented and honestly measured, it could not be shown to reduce crime.
The distance between an idea that sounds reasonable and an idea that has been shown to work is exactly the distance crime science exists to measure, before public money is committed to it. That the person who devised the approach was also the one to write its limitations down plainly is the standard academic work ought to meet.
References
Hale, C., Harris, C., Uglow, S., Gilling, L., & Netten, A. (2004). Targeting the markets for stolen goods: Two targeted policing initiative projects (Development and Practice Report 17). Home Office. https://popcenter.asu.edu/sites/g/files/litvpz3631/files/problems/stolen_goods/PDFs/Haleetal2004.pdf
Sutton, M. (2010). Stolen goods markets (Problem-Specific Guides Series No. 57). Center for Problem-Oriented Policing, U.S. Department of Justice Office of Community Oriented Policing Services. https://popcenter.asu.edu/sites/g/files/litvpz3631/files/problems/PDFs/stolen_goods.pdf
Sutton, M., Schneider, J., & Hetherington, S. (2001). Tackling theft with the market reduction approach (Crime Reduction Research Series Paper 8). Home Office. https://popcenter.asu.edu/sites/g/files/litvpz3631/files/problems/burglary_retail/PDFs/crrs08.pdf
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