Getting Closer to the Action: Using the Virtual Enactment Method to Understand Burglary

ABSTRACT

In this article we describe a new method, the Virtual Enactment Method (VEM), to enhance offender recall and motivation to disclose information by having burglars reflect on their experience while committing a crime in a simulated virtual environment. Participants, a sample of 61 incarcerated burglars, ‘thought aloud’ whilst undertaking a virtual burglary. Following the ‘virtual’ burglary, emerging themes were expanded upon in an interview. We show that the simulated environment effectively reinstates the criminogenic event, increases engagement, enhances recall, and encourages participants to talk more openly about their experiences, skills and knowledge.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge the Amsterdam Law and Behavior Institute (A-LAB), the Department of Psychology, University of Portsmouth and the British Academy for funding this project. We would also like to thank the National Offender Management Service and governors of various prisons for allowing access to our prisoner participants. We would like to thank Josh Cole, Kayleigh Cooper and Jennifer Evans for assisting in data collection, all of our participants and the staff in prisons who went above and beyond the call of duty to assist us during a very difficult time in the UK prison service.

Declaration of interest

The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the article.

Notes

¹ The Virtual Burglary Project is an ongoing collaboration between the University of Portsmouth, the Netherlands Institute for the study of Crime and Law Enforcement (NSCR) and VU University Amsterdam.

² As we were also recruiting a comparison group of prisoners without burglary experience, we ran 116 participants in total and the 61 we report on here were those with high levels of burglary experience. We also included a non-offender control group (community-based), and these two control groups were matched on age, ethnicity and socio-economic background.

³ For instance, these insights could contribute significantly to the ‘Transforming Rehabilitation Agenda’ (Ministry of Justice, 2013) in the UK which, for the first time, is aimed at addressing the needs of acquisitive offenders as well as their more violent counterparts.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Amy Meenaghan

AMY MEENAGHAN is a PhD student at the University of Portsmouth. Her research interests include expertise in residential burglars, and the use of virtual reality to understand offender decision-making and motivations.

Claire Nee

CLAIRE NEE is the director of the International Centre for Research in Forensic Psychology, University of Portsmouth, UK, where she coordinates research on offender cognition, detecting deception, and memory in psycho-legal settings. Her work focuses on cognitive and behavioural aspects of expertise in offenders and methodologies to better understand the offender’s insight on their own behavior.

Jean-Louis Van Gelder

JEAN-LOUIS VAN GELDER is Full Professor at the Faculty of Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences at the University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands. His research interests include the application of novel technologies such as virtual reality to criminal decision making research, future selves, and the interplay of cognition and affect in the prediction of criminal choice.

Marco Otte

MARCO OTTE, MA, spent well over 15 years working in the archaeological industry, where he occupied a number of management positions. Currently, he is in charge of the Tech Labs of the Network Institute at the VU University Amsterdam. He fully participates in academic research as advisor, technical supporter, technical creator, and academic content.

Zarah Vernham

ZARAH VERNHAM completed her PhD in March 2015 and is now a Senior Lecturer of Security and Investigations at the University of Portsmouth in the UK. Her main research areas are: Detecting deception in investigative interviews, understanding offender behaviours and understanding the cognitions and emotions of child sex offenders using virtual reality.