Stolen Goods Network

Some stolen goods dealers operate completely outside the law, while others flourish under the cover of the appearance of legitimate businesses, albeit businesses that are sustained by the provision of stolen stock. Compared with other areas of offending, such as burglary and robbery, there has been little research into stolen goods. Relatively little is known about who buys stolen goods, how offenders sell them, and how dealers in stolen goods operate. Not surprisingly, therefore, property thieves—particularly prolific ones—are generally perceived by criminologists and the wider public to be “bent” offenders whose predation on “straight society” can be explained in large part as a motivated response to their poverty, subculture, cultural influences, substance addiction, or individual pathology. Contrastingly, research into the markets where thieves sell stolen goods reveals that many so-called legitimate businesses, run by those widely perceived to be respectably “straight” citizens, indirectly motivate and directly encourage people to steal property.

One thing that research into stolen goods networks reveals is that most stolen goods are sold rather than retained by thieves for their own enjoyment. Therefore, stolen goods markets motivate thieves. Most goods stolen from houses and cars, or from businesses such as shops, are sold within half an hour of the theft and are then openly enjoyed by other people. Because of this crucial role that stolen goods markets play in the property theft system, they and their associated local, national, and international networks warrant close attention from criminologists, policymakers, police, and the courts.

Compared with those who do the stealing, business owners and other members of the public who buy and deal in stolen goods seldom serve time in young offender institutions or adult prisons. Social hypocrisy is at work here, which has clear implications for civic society. Apparent stalwarts of the community who encourage and facilitate theft are at large in communities and operating profitable businesses or otherwise enjoying the proceeds of crime. Meanwhile, those who do the stealing for them are regularly targeted by the police and taken out of circulation. This observation is important because, at the time of writing, many youth offender programs stress the importance of being socially included within a broadly perceived notion of straight society. But many in high-crime areas observe that society is not straight, because every day they see that trade in stolen goods markets is going on.

Crimes and their organization develop according to access to, and ability to foster, mutual cooperation. Their expansion is limited in large part by a mixture of distrust, domination, and the inability to legitimately warehouse and transport stock or delegate illegal tasks to all but the most trusted of employees. Some types of stolen goods markets, like the so-called black markets that thrived in various nation-states suffering shortages of food and goods during World War II, depend on almost universal public tolerance to operate. One of the most frequent justifications for both buying or trading in the black markets of World War II was that violations of laws that prohibit illegal trading were not considered by offenders to be “real” crimes, and so they believed that they should not be punished.

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