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Crime scripting: A systematic review

Article in European Journal of Criminology · June 2019

DOI: 10.1177/1477370819850943

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EUC0010.1177/1477370819850943European Journal of CriminologyDehghanniri and Borrion

Article

European Journal of Criminology

Crime scripting: A
1­–22
© The Author(s) 2019
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systematic review [Link]/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/1477370819850943
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Hashem Dehghanniri
De Montfort University, UK
University College London, UK

Hervé Borrion
University College London, UK

Abstract
More than two decades after the publication of Cornish’s seminal work about the script-theoretic
approach to crime analysis, this article examines how the concept has been applied in our
community. The study provides evidence confirming that the approach is increasingly popular;
and takes stock of crime scripting practices through a systematic review of over 100 scripts
published between 1994 and 2018. The results offer the first comprehensive picture of this
approach and highlight new directions for those interested in using data from cyber-systems and
the Internet of Things to develop effective situational crime prevention measures.

Keywords
Crime commission process, crime script, modus operandi, scenario, situational crime
prevention

Background
There exist many approaches to crime reduction. Whereas the majority concentrate on
the propensity to commit crime, situational crime prevention (SCP) operates by altering
potential offenders’ judgements of risk and reward. Specifically, it seeks to deter them
from taking certain courses of action by influencing their perception of opportunities,
typically at or near the time and place of its envisaged commission (Clarke, 1997); 25
SCP techniques have been distinguished, such as changing the perceived effort, reward

Corresponding author:
Hervé Borrion, Jill Dando Institute of Security and Crime Science, University College London, 35 Tavistock
Square, London, WC1H 9EZ, UK.
Email: [Link]@[Link]
2 European Journal of Criminology 00(0)

and viable excuses associated with the translation of opportunity into criminal action
(Bullock, Clarke, and Tilley, 2010). Supported by a raft of empirical studies, Clarke
(2009: 3) has claimed that those techniques have been successfully applied to a wide
variety of crimes, including organized crime and terrorism, and could, with the necessary
ingenuity, be applied across the whole spectrum of crime.
For efficacy, interventions must be tailored to the crimes they are meant to address (
Goldstein, 1979). For this reason, practitioners are encouraged to formulate and analyse
problems before settling on a response (Borrion et al., 2019). To reduce crime risks in
public space, for instance, problem-solving models recommend analysts to collect data
that can assist in identifying the crime events likely to occur in such settings, model the
sequences of activities that form their crime commission processes, determine the situ-
ational conditions that permit or facilitate them, settle on the environmental conditions
within which offenders are likely to operate, and identify factors that influence their
decisions to commit certain crimes, substitute one offence for another or desist from any
further criminal action (Cornish and Clarke, 2003) .
Conscious that the development of crime-specific interventions requires a detailed
understanding of the factors influencing decisions to commit crime, Cornish introduced
the script-theoretic approach to crime analysis: ‘a way of generating, organising, and
systematizing knowledge about the procedural aspects and procedural requirements of
crime commission’ (Cornish, 1994a, 1994b) . In essence, crime scripts are models that
describe ‘sequences of predictable actions, locations, and roles that constitute [crime]
events’ (Bennett, 1993). They were recently described by Ekblom and Gill (2016) as
‘abstracted descriptions of a particular kind of behavioural process, namely structured
sequences of behaviour extended over time and perhaps space, which could be consid-
ered functionally self-contained units or subunits of longer sequences’.
The script-theoretic approach has a lot to offer to crime analysts. Studies have referred
to it as a tool for eliciting the offender’s behaviour and the rationale for their decisions
(Beauregard and Martineau, 2015; Beauregard, Proulx, et al., 2007; Brookman et al.,
2011; Chiu et al., 2011; Gamman et al., 2012; Hagan and Levi, 2004; Hobbs et al., 2005;
Lavorgna, 2015; Lord and Levi 2017; Meijerink, 2013; Meyer, 2013; Meyer et al., 2015;
Willison, 2008; Willison and Siponen, 2006; Wortley and Mazerolle, 2013), and others
have highlighted its utility in organizing existing knowledge about the requirements of
crime commission such as the skills or resources that criminals need to deploy in order to
execute a crime (Balemba and Beauregard, 2013; Basamanowicz, 2011; Bichler et al.,
2013; Cornish, 1994b; De Vries, 2012, 2013; Gilmour, 2014; Le, 2013; Leontiadis, 2014;
Meijerink, 2013).
As with many techniques, the practice of crime scripting has happened rather
organically, with limited top down guidance or coordination between researchers.
More than two decades after the publication of Cornish’s seminal article, we believe
it is now time to draw a contemporary picture of crime scripting practices. The first
objective of this study was to test the claim that the script-theoretic approach has been
increasingly popular in recent years (see Ekblom and Gill, 2016; Leclerc, 2013,
2017). If confirmed, this trend would be an indicator for one or both of two reasons:
it might imply that more empirical examples are now available to demonstrate the use
of this approach as a potential crime reduction tool, and/or it might reflect an
Dehghanniri and Borrion 3

expansion of the crime script community, and encourage others to learn and apply this
approach.
The second objective of this study was to compile a list of references that crime ana-
lysts could consult to find scripts. As time goes by, it is becoming increasingly difficult
to keep track of what types of crime have been scripted and hence to identify existing
gaps. Although illustrative lists can be found in the literature (for example, Borrion,
2013; Leclerc, 2013), none of them represents an exhaustive resource. As a result, certain
crime scripts might not be used (if analysts are unaware of their existence) and knowl-
edge gaps are still difficult to identify. By compiling the first comprehensive catalogue
of relevant publications, this work can therefore enhance the impact of published research
and stimulate new developments in this field.
The third objective of this review was to take stock of crime scripting practices.
Although there is no unique scripting method (Brayley et al., 2011), little is known about
the diversity of methods used. For this reason, we decided to examine how researchers
identify relevant data sources, select visualization models, and assess the scripts they
generate. Carefully analysed, this information can be used to create guidelines and train-
ing materials for crime reduction practitioners, identify methodological issues, and ulti-
mately support the development of high-quality crime scripts.
The fourth objective of this study was to identify synonyms of the term ‘crime script’
that are used by those familiar with Cornish’s work. In engineering, for example, similar
concepts – use cases and business process models – were proposed several decades ago
to represent how socio-technological systems work and how users interact within them
(Claus et al., 1979). Identifying those will help raise awareness about the knowledge,
models, techniques and tools that could be borrowed from other fields to improve the
quality of crime scripts.

Method
Overall approach
To take stock of crime scripting practices, we have conducted a systematic review of
relevant studies published between 1 January 1994 and 31 December 2018. Systematic
reviews are commonly used in the field of crime prevention (for example, Bowers et al.,
2011; Sidebottom et al., 2015; Snook et al., 2007) and are generally considered well
suited to produce up-to-date summaries of studies in an area, give an objective collation
of results and produce reliable recommendations (Gough et al., 2012). This research was
conducted following the stages typically found in systematic reviews (for example,
Gough et al., 2012; Kitchenham and Charters, 2007; Wright et al., 2007): Formulating
the Objectives, Searching the Literature, Literature Selection, Data Extraction and Data
Analysis.

Formulating the objectives

As mentioned in the previous section, the four questions investigated in this work relate
to the diffusion and application of this approach within but also beyond criminology:
4 European Journal of Criminology 00(0)

Figure 1. Stages of the screening process.

1. Has the script-theoretic approach gained traction since Cornish’s seminal article
was published?
2. What types of crime have been scripted during that period?
3. What methods have been used to generate and evaluate crime scripts?
4. Under what other names are crime scripts known in other disciplines?

Searching the literature

The search was conducted through two mechanisms: (1) keyword search (using the wild-
card term ‘crime script*’) of relevant data sources including grey literature and disserta-
tion databases, and (2) forward citation search based on the primary article in this area
(Cornish, 1994b). The search spans the period starting with the publication of this article
and ending in 2018. As shown in Figure 1, 13 electronic databases were searched: ASSIA
(Applied Social Sciences Index and Abstracts), CINCH (Australian Criminology
Database), Criminal Justice Database (ProQuest), ERIC (Education Resources
Information Center), IBSS (International Bibliography of Social Sciences), NCJRS
(National Criminal Justice Reference Service), ProQuest theses and dissertations,
PsycINFO, PsycEXTRA, SCOPUS, Social Policy and Practice, Sociological Abstracts,
and Web of Science. In addition, three other data sources were used: [Link],
Oxford Journals and Wiley Online Library. These were used in similar projects (for
example, Bowers et al., 2010, 2011; Johnson et al., 2015; Sidebottom et al., 2015) or
were flagged when searching through multidisciplinary search engines such as British
Library Explorer and Google Scholar. Despite criticisms regarding the use of Google
Dehghanniri and Borrion 5

Scholar in systematic reviews (see Boeker et al., 2013), we decided to use it to conduct
a forward citation search because the main article, Cornish (1994b), was not available in
any of the above data sources.

Literature selection
Three inclusion criteria were adopted to screen the identified publications:

•• Criterion 1: The publication is written in English.

•• Criterion 2: The publication contains the word ‘script’ in its body AND makes a
non-marginal reference to crime scripts.
•• Criterion 3: The publication concerns the procedural aspects or procedural
requirements of crime, as defined in Cornish (1994b).

The first criterion was introduced because of our limited language skills and our lack of
confidence in the results generated by a translating tool (for example, Google Translate).
However, this decision was considered acceptable after a search on Google Scholar
established that 92 percent of the articles identified are written in English. The search
was repeated two years later and corroborated these results. Furthermore, some of the
articles discarded owing to the first criterion might have been translated into English, in
which case they would be included in our results. The second criterion allowed a wide
range of publications to be considered (including those referring to the terms ‘script’,
‘crime script’, ‘script-theoretic approach’, ‘cognitive script’, ‘offence script’ or ‘crime
commission script’), while excluding publications in which these terms appear only in a
footnote or reference. The third criterion was used to discriminate between the different
meanings of the term ‘crime script’, and to discard the publications that have no direct
semantic relation to Cornish’s approach, especially those concerning ‘movie scripts’ or
‘news scripts’ (for example, Gilliam and Iyengar, 2000) .

Data extraction and analysis

Publications and authors. All the publications selected at the screening stage were then
reviewed by one of us, and the following data extracted: study title, publication date and
author name. We counted the annual number of manuscripts published in the period of
interest, and generated two cumulative frequency distributions that represent the number
of relevant publications each year (see Figure 2). In addition, the list of publications was
used to estimate the size of the community by calculating the number of authors who
have published on this topic over time.

Crime types. The types of crime discussed in the selected studies were identified in the
title or abstract, or, when they were not found there, in the body of the articles. We also
searched for the presence of crime scripts within the shortlisted articles. This was done
by searching for synonyms of the term ‘crime script’ and looking for diagrams, figures,
tables or narratives that describe a crime commission process. For every identified article
that contains a crime script, we both independently recorded the type of crime that was
6 European Journal of Criminology 00(0)

Figure 2. Cumulative frequency distribution showing the number of publications mentioning

the script-theoretic approach (dark grey) or including an original crime script (light grey), over
time (1994–2018).

modelled, and discussed them when the results were different. For this, we used a typol-
ogy inspired by the categories of offences used in the British Crime Survey (ONS, 2015).
For convenience, we included corruption and fraud scripts within the same category, and
did the same for theft and robbery offences. As seen in the Results section, some of the
scripts can be associated with multiple categories (for example, fraud offences causing
environmental damage).

Data sources and visualization models. The articles containing an original crime script
were examined by both of us, and the data sources and visualization models that were
adopted compiled into a list. Data sources were characterized based on their origins (for
example, primary or secondary data) and types (for example, police report, newspaper
article).

Verification and validation. Information concerning the quality assessment of crime scripts
was gathered by searching for possible variants of the words verification, validation,
assessment and evaluation (verif*, valid*, assess*, evaluat*) in the publications that con-
tain an original crime script. The extracted information was then thematically classified
based on the criteria proposed by Borrion (2013). New elements, where appropriate,
would be added to the list.

Synonyms. Synonyms of the term ‘crime script’ were identified in an iterative manner, as
suggested by Holton (2007). First, synonyms (for example, offence script) were identi-
fied in Cornish (1994b). A list of related keywords (for example, offence) was then gen-
erated based on those and used (in conjunction with a wildcard character) to identify
additional synonyms (for example, offen*) within the selected articles. When a synonym
was found that contained a new term (for example, scenario in the expression offending
Dehghanniri and Borrion 7

scenario), the latter was added to the list of keywords and all selected studies were
searched again.

Results
Search results
The search tactics described above returned 889 publications. The aforementioned crite-
ria were then applied to the identified studies, resulting in the inclusion of 416 studies, as
shown in Figure 1.
We excluded 473 publications from this study. As explained earlier, 74 of them were
written in languages other than English. The three main identified non-English languages
were French (22, 30 percent), Dutch (18, 24 percent) and Italian (11, 15 percent). We
discarded 23 other publications (written in German, Spanish, Chinese, Portuguese,
Finnish, Korean, Swedish, Bosnian, Czech and Greek).

Has the script-theoretic approach gained traction since Cornish’s seminal article was pub-
lished?. Figure 2 is a cumulative frequency diagram showing the number of publica-
tions directly related to crime scripts between 1994 and 2018. It confirms that the
number of publications has increased more rapidly in recent years. Over half of the
publications (52 percent) were recorded in the last five years. Within the 114 publi-
cations containing a crime script, we identified 105 original scripts in 85 of them (75
percent). Some publications contain multiple scripts about the same or different
crime types. Those publications comprise a majority of peer-reviewed articles
(49), followed by book chapters (14); theses (12); conference proceedings (6); and
reports (4).
Figure 3 indicates that 485 authors contributed to the 416 publications identified as
being directly related to crime scripts. The great majority of the authors (75 percent) have
published just one article in this list; and only 22 (5 percent) had (co-)authored five or
more in that period. This suggests there are actually very few crime script experts or that
they do not publish their scripts. It also shows that the number of authors and the number
of publications have increased in a similar fashion over time.

What types of crime have been scripted during that period?. Not all the reviewed articles
were focused on a particular crime type. For instance, Borrion (2013) wrote an article
about quality assurance in crime scripting, and Leclerc (2013) discussed an extension of
the script-theoretic approach to victims, without focusing on any particular crime type.
Of the 416 reviewed studies, about three-quarters could be associated with 157 specific
crime types (Figure 4).
Focusing on the 105 scripts identified in the search, we identified numerous crime
types that could be classified into eight broad crime categories. Among them, 24 scripts
were classified in two categories. The results in Tables 1 and 2 show the following cat-
egories are the most prevalent: cybercrime (24 scripts) and corruption and fraud offences
(23), followed by robbery and theft offences (19), drugs offences (14), environmental
crime (14), violent crime (13), sexual offences (9), and other (13).
8 European Journal of Criminology 00(0)

Figure 3. Cumulative frequency distribution showing the number of authors of publications

mentioning the script-theoretic approach (dark grey) or including an original crime script (light
grey), over time (1994–2018).

Figure 4. Crime types discussed in the selected studies.

That cybercrime tops this list can be attributed to the fact that it is a broad category
that covers many crime types, including traditional crimes that have an online compo-
nent (cyber-enabled crime). In addition, many academics in computer science depart-
ments conduct research to find defences against cyber-attacks, which often starts with
Dehghanniri and Borrion 9

Table 1. Number of scripts per crime category (1994–2018).

Crime type Number of original crime scripts

Cybercrime 24
Corruption and fraud offences 23
Robbery and theft offences 19
Drugs offences 14
Environmental crime 13
Violent crime 13
Sexual offences 9
Other 13

Notes: Some of the identified crime scripts were mapped to multiple crime types. For example, The process
of seafood substitution, short weighting, mislabeling and overtreatment of seafood upon landing is related to both
Environmental crime and Corruption and fraud offences.

Table 2. Crime types covered by the 105 crime scripts (1994–2018).

Cybercrime Account takeover (Haelterman, 2016; Willison, 2005); Attacks on

online banking (Leukfeldt and Jansen, 2015); Carding (Meijerink, 2013);
Cybercrime against electricity infrastructure (Rege, 2012); Internet-
related criminal opportunities (Lavorgna, 2014b); Mapping trolling on a
cyber attack journey (Somer, Tiido, Sample and Mitchener-Nissen, 2018);
Phishing (Leukfeldt, 2014); Physical penetration (Dimkov, Van Cleeff,
Pieters, and Hartel, 2010); (Illegal/Warez) release process (Basamanowicz,
2011; Basamanowicz and Bouchard, 2011).
Corruption Cigarette smuggling (Hiropoulos, Freilich, Chermak and Newman, 2013);
and fraud Corruption (Rowe, Akman, Smith and Tomison, 2012); Corruption in
offences public procurement of works contracts (Zanella, 2013); Counterfeit
alcohol distribution (Lord, Spencer, Bellotti and Benson, 2017);
Credit card fraud (van Hardeveld, Webber and O’Hara, 2016); Credit
card identity theft (Dehghanniri, Letier and Borrion, 2015); Expense
reimbursement fraud (Haelterman, 2016); (Fraudulent) ticket purchase
(Hutchings, 2018); Internet-mediated trade in counterfeit pharmaceuticals
(Lavorgna, 2014b); Money laundering (Gilmour, 2014); Online auction
fraud (Hartel, Junger and Wieringa, 2010); Pharmaceutical counterfeiting
(Kennedy, Haberman and Wilson, 2018); The process of fraud and other
crimes for gain (Levi, 2008); Stolen card fraud (Haelterman, 2016).
Robbery and Armed robbery (Borrion et al., 2017; Leclerc and Wortley, 2013); Auto-
theft offences theft (Cornish, 1994b); Car theft (Knapik, Schoch, Muller and Kargl, 2012);
Metal theft from railway (Ashby, 2016); Pickpocketing (Gentry, 2015);
Professional auto theft (Cornish and Clarke, 2002); Ringing script (Morselli
and Roy, 2008); Robbery (Gentry, 2015); Shoplifting (Lasky et al., 2015);
Snatch theft (Gentry, 2015); Stolen vehicle pathway (Lantsman, 2013);
Suburban burglary (Cornish and Clarke, 2008); Subway mugging (Cornish,
1994b); Taxi robbery (Smith and Clarke, 2000); Theft from a moving
vehicle (Haelterman, 2016); Theft from churches (Price, Sidebottom, and
Tilley, 2014); Theft of electronic products (Ekblom and Sidebottom, 2008);
Vehicle theft (Block, 2012; Morselli and Roy, 2008).
(Continued)
10 European Journal of Criminology 00(0)

Table 2. (Continued)
Sexual Child sex abuse (Leclerc, Wortley and Smallbone, 2011, Leclerc and
offences Wortley, 2013); Child sex trafficking (Brayley, Cockbain and Laycock,
2011); Compensated dating (Li, 2015); Human trafficking (Savona,
Giommoni and Mancuso, 2014); Internet-mediated sex trafficking
(Lavorgna, 2014b); Offending process of sex offenders (Beauregard and
Leclerc, 2007); Sexual assault (Beauregard and Leclerc, 2007); Sexual
offences (Cook, Reynald, Leclerc and Wortley, 2018); The tracking of
stranger-perpetrator in public places (Beauregard, Rossmo and Proulx,
2007).
Violent crime Crime script for active shooter event (Osborne and Capellan, 2017);
Explosive in rail carriage (Meyer, 2011); Foreign fighting (De Bie, De
Poot and Van Der Leun, 2015); Hit-and-run (Hopkins and Chivers, 2018);
Hostage taking (Yun and Roth, 2008); Illegal trade in ammunition (De
Vries, 2013); Mass shooting (Meyer, 2013); Trade and use of converted
firearms (De Vries, 2012); Urban youth violence events (Wilkinson, 2011);
Vehicle-borne explosives (Meyer, 2012); Violent crime (Smith, 2008,
2009).
Drugs Cannabis cultivation (Duijn, Kashirin and Sloot, 2014; Duijn and Klerks,
offences 2014); Clandestine drug laboratories—drug manufacturing (Chiu, Leclerc
and Townsley 2011); Domestic methamphetamine supply chain (Bright
and Delaney, 2013); Drug dealing (Jacques and Bernasco, 2013); Heroin
production, importation, and distribution (Le, 2013); Internet-mediated
trafficking in synthetic drugs and NPSs (Lavorgna, 2014b); Internet-
mediated trafficking in traditional recreational drugs (Lavorgna, 2014b);
Online drug trade (Leontiadis and Hutchings, 2015); Open-air drug selling
(Sytsma and Piza, 2018).
Environmental Illegal ivory market (Moreto and Lemieux, 2015); Illegal waste dumping
crime (Sahramäki and Kankaanranta, 2017); Illegal waste traffic (Dalla Gasperina,
2014); Illegal hunting, poaching and illegal wildlife trade (Hill, 2015);
Internet-mediated wildlife trafficking (Lavorgna, 2014b); Process of
removal and transshipment and landing of illegal, unreported and
unregulated (IUU) fishing (Petrossian and Pezzella, 2018); Process of
seafood substitution, short weighting, mislabeling and overtreatment of
seafood upon landing (Petrossian and Pezzella, 2018); Rhino horn and
live pet trafficking (Viollaz, Graham, and Lantsman, 2018); Rhino poaching
(van Doormaal, Lemieux, and Ruiter, 2018); Waste crime (Tompson
and Chainey, 2011); Waste crime script for tyre collection (Baird, Curry
and Cruz, 2014); Wildlife crime (Lavorgna, 2013); Wildlife trafficking
(Lavorgna, 2014c).
Other crime Doping (Vakhitova and Bell, 2018); Crimes linked to wind farm creation
scripts (Caneppele, Riccardi and Standridge, 2013); Graffiti (Cornish, 1994b);
A hypothetical capable guardian script (Leclerc, 2014); A hypothetical
handler script (Leclerc, 2014); A hypothetical place manager script
(Leclerc, 2014); Intervention script of capable guardians against crime in
public settings (Leclerc and Reynald, 2015); Negative posting scenario
(Samonas, 2013); Safety script (Leberatto, 2015).

Notes: Some of the identified crime types can be associated with multiple categories (for example, fraud of-
fences and environmental crime). Those are included in only one category to avoid duplicates.
Dehghanniri and Borrion 11

modelling them. The prevalence of cybercrime scripts can also be explained by the fact
that data may be more readily available in this field where data transfers (for example,
financial transactions) are generally logged in computers and servers. It is noteworthy
that fraud offences also come very high in this list, as they often relate to trafficking in
goods and counterfeits (for example, alcohol, pharmaceutical and wildlife products) in
various sectors.

What methods have been used to generate, visualize and evaluate those scripts?
Crime script generation. Although this review found no study that describes in detail
all the stages involved in generating, visualizing and evaluating crime scripts, it identi-
fied several publications containing information about those stages.
Data sources: Of the 85 selected studies that include at least one original crime script,
60 (71 percent) contain information about data sources used to generate the scripts: 8
publications indicated that their scripts had been created from primary data (Rege, 2012;
Jacques and Bernasco, 2013; Li, 2015), 29 scripts were created using a mix of primary
and secondary data (for example, Brayley et al., 2011) and 23 scripts were created using
just secondary data (for example, Meyer, 2011); 25 publications provided no or ambigu-
ous information about the data used to create the scripts. In several cases, we found that
authors had used the basic script structure available in a publication as a starting point,
before using primary or secondary data to populate the script with details (for example,
Bright and Delaney, 2013).
The secondary datasets reported in those publications were collected from both public
and private sector organizations. They consist of court data (Chiu et al., 2011); police
reports (Brayley et al., 2011) such as offenders’ testimonies (Beauregard, Proulx, et al.,
2007); interviews of experts and victims (Leukfeldt, 2014; Willison, 2006); police statis-
tics (De Vries, 2012); surveys (Samonas, 2013; Willison, 2005); video footage (Borrion
et al., 2017; Sytsma and Piza, 2018); and synthesis of open data (Deslauriers-Varin and
Beauregard, 2010; Lavorgna, 2014a, 2014b; Meijerink, 2013).
Visualization models: Three models have been used to represent the 105 identified
crime scripts. The most prevalent models are tables with narratives (53 percent) (for
example, Cornish, 1994b), followed by flowcharts with narratives (37 percent) (for
example, Cornish and Clarke, 2008) and text only (10 percent) (for example, Beauregard,
Proulx, et al., 2007). Some publications that included tables with statistics about the
attributes (for example, space, time) of the crime commission process and the actors
involved were not considered as crime scripts because they were not sufficient to under-
stand the crime commission process.

Crime script assessment. Borrion (2013) highlighted the importance of applying a for-
mal verification or validation process to assess the quality of the generated crime scripts
– see also (Dehghanniri and Borrion, 2016; Hutchings and Holt, 2015). To validate their
script, Brayley et al. (2011) indicated they had used it as a ‘stimulus for a structured brain-
storming session’ aimed at identifying interventions. However, idea generation was not
constrained by specific practical considerations and the proposed interventions were not
evaluated. Moreover, the lack of a comparison group (such as a group of analysts using
no script or a low-quality script) in their study means it is difficult to assess the extent
12 European Journal of Criminology 00(0)

Table 3. Synonyms of the term ‘crime script’ and the number of publications in which they
appear.

Synonym Number of publications

Crime scripta 328b (79%)
Crime commission processa 262 (63%)
Modus operandia 182 (44%)
Scenario 115 (28%)
Offender behavioura 13 (3%)

Notes:
a. Appears in Cornish (1994b).
b. Out of 416 selected studies.

to which the script influenced the outcomes of this process. Chiu et al. (2011) discussed
the degree of completeness of their script, indicating that the ‘gaps in [their] table reflect
script stage-intervention points for which the analysis was not able to reveal sufficient
understanding for preventative measures’. They also pointed to some of the limitations
caused by the fact that their sample was small and potentially not representative of the
population of interest. The main aspect investigated in their study was the reliability of
the initial data (data validity), a point also discussed in some other articles – for example,
Basamanowicz and Bouchard (2011); Beauregard and Leclerc (2007); Lantsman (2013);
Le (2013); Lord et al. (2017); Sytsma and Piza (2018); and Vakhitova and Bell (2018).

What other names are used for the term ‘crime script’?. More than 70 synonyms of the term
‘crime script’ were identified in the 416 reviewed publications. Those are often combina-
tions of very similar synonyms for the words ‘crime’ and ‘script’. As shown in Table 3,
‘crime commission process’ is the most common expression after ‘crime script’. The first
synonym that did not feature in Cornish’s reference publication is ‘scenario’. In this con-
text, this term was found to be mostly used in the risk analysis and information security
literature (for example, Borrion and Bouhana, 2012; Dimkov, 2012; Meyer and Ekblom,
2012; Willison, 2006). This word could be used for the search stage in future reviews.

Discussion
Twenty years after
The results of this systematic review constitute the first evidence that the script-theoretic
approach has been gaining momentum within the research community, as affirmed by
Leclerc (2017). Both the number of publications mentioning this approach and the pool
of authors have increased exponentially, with 80 percent of those recorded in the last
eight years of the studied period (1994–2018). It is noteworthy that the publications
referring to this concept are not limited to a few specialist niches. On the contrary, they
concern crime types across a wide spectrum, with the rather broad denomination of
‘cybercrime’ topping the list. Among those, the number of publications that contain at
least one original crime script has been increasing in a similar fashion. These trends are
Dehghanniri and Borrion 13

encouraging for the dissemination and recognition of the script-theoretic approach, espe-
cially as they might reflect an increase in the creation and use of crime scripts by practi-
tioners more widely. The magnitude of those figures is somewhat less impressive. With
only 105 original crime scripts, the knowledge published in this area seems incredibly
limited.
There are reasons to believe, however, that the crime scripts identified in this system-
atic review may not be representative of the overall population of crime scripts:

•• The scope of this systematic review was limited to those studies published after
1994 and using the words crime script(s) or citing Cornish’s reference article.
Because of this, only the work of those authors aware of Cornish’s work at the
time of writing was considered in this review. Publications that include procedural
models of crime but make no direct mention of Cornish’s concept would not have
been included in our analysis.
•• Because unpublished crime scripts were not taken into account, the total number
of scripts generated in that period could be greater than our estimates by several
orders of magnitude. Some scripts may have been created but considered too sen-
sitive to be published (for example, cases where intelligence reports are used as
sources of information or where there is a risk that sharing procedural information
helps offenders carry out those crimes).
•• A more extensive backward reference searching strategy (Levy and Ellis, 2006;
Tada et al., 1998; Webster and Watson, 2002) could have been used by searching
through all the citations of the selected studies. However, this was not possible
due to time constraints.

Taking all these points into account, it seems a reasonable conclusion that a lot more
crime scripts might have been generated than those identified in this review, including
some that describe crime types not unveiled here. Paradoxically, the quality of the scripts
we examined is likely to be unrepresentatively high since many of the identified publica-
tions are peer-reviewed articles. Given the lack of evidence in support of the quality of
published scripts, one may therefore have doubts about that of unpublished scripts. To
reiterate our findings, many of the published scripts have been authored by academics
without an evident track record of scripting crime: only 5 percent of the identified
researchers had authored five or more of the identified publications in the studied period.
Little comfort could be found in the reported methodology either: first, most identified
scripts have been generated intuitively, without adhering to a strict and recognized script-
ing protocol; and, second, there was not enough information available to replicate the
work reported in those publications, to assess the quality of the scripts, or to ascertain the
level of methodological rigour involved in their creation.

Are existing crime scripting methods good enough?

That published scripts are not accompanied by sufficient methodological details (that is,
data or specific information about the ways in which they were created) may have more
to do with poor reporting than with poor modelling. In fact, legitimate questions could be
14 European Journal of Criminology 00(0)

raised about the usefulness of formalizing the crime scripting process. Indeed, the estab-
lishment of the script-theoretic approach can already be regarded as an unnecessarily
complicated attempt to codify and systematize a practice that had been in existence long
before being theorized by Cornish. Certainly, it is difficult to imagine how military engi-
neers and security architects managed to create successful arrays of protective measures
without framing problems using a script-based approach, and asking questions such as:
What steps do most village attacks (burglaries) have in common? What can prevent
marauders (burglars) from penetrating in villages (people’s homes)? What would offend-
ers do if defensive walls and watchtowers (fences and CCTV) were introduced around
habitats? And so on.
If crime scripting is useful in finding innovative ways to prevent crime then surely it
is worth investing time to think how best to generate, visualize and analyse crime scripts.
Are intuitive ways to think about crime processes good enough? Thereby implying that
any past or future attempts to explain how to script crime are utterly futile. Perhaps one
of the most useful findings emerging from the review is that we did not find enough
evidence to answer this question. Simply put, there appears to have been no attempt to
empirically assess the contribution of crime scripting techniques in the two decades that
have followed the formalization of the script-theoretic approach.
In this context, we can only highlight that more formal crime scripting methods have
both advantages and disadvantages. Indeed, it can be hypothesized that providing more
structured guidance helps communicate to junior crime analysts what the ‘crime script-
ing’ task entails. Greater methodological clarity should logically support their under-
standing of how to script crime, give them greater confidence in the resulting products,
and increase their willingness to engage in problem-solving activities more generally
rather than blindly opting for existing security recipes that may not be adapted to the
problems of interest. Another possible advantage of using structured methods is that poor
performance (that is, an inability to identify suitable crime reduction interventions) could
be traced back to specific issues in the method that was prescribed or in the way it was
applied, and subsequently addressed. Therefore, more structured methods (and possibly
some form of standardization) might be a necessary step to encourage greater integration
and comparison of scripts.
However, opponents of structured methods are not without arguments. Indeed, the
more detailed crime scripting methods, the more time and resources analysts have to
invest in learning and applying them, which makes the script-theoretic approach less
accessible and plays against its successful diffusion (Hardy et al., 1995; Yourdon Inc.,
1993). Although structured methods are intended to be generic (so they can be applied
to many problems), there is always a possibility that they do not contain enough detail
and scripters do not find them useful (Gillies and Smith, 1994; Hardy et al., 1995).
This may be an issue here, because those methods do not always adapt well to differ-
ent analytical needs. For instance, the level of specificity needed for the script may
vary depending on the complexity of the crime, which could be difficult to communi-
cate with a simple scripting method. Conversely, if the method is overly complicated,
scripters may perceive the benefits to be sufficiently high to invest time learning
them, in comparison with in-house or intuitive methods (Hardy et al., 1995; Olle
et al., 1992).
Dehghanniri and Borrion 15

Without evidence that structured methods can yield substantial improvement, ‘back-
of-the-envelope’ scripting might therefore be considered good enough for most problems
– even though they could actually offer substantial benefits in terms of crime reduction.

Conclusions
Cornish’s vision for a script-theoretic approach to crime analysis is regarded as a meth-
odological landmark in the analysis of crime and top down rational development of
crime reduction measures. Following this approach, analysis of individual crime com-
mission procedures could unveil the factors and mechanisms giving rise to crime, and
their comparison could reveal the flexibility, variation and evolution of crime activities.
Following this approach, libraries of procedural models – not only effective modi oper-
andi but also ineffective ones – would soon prove a formidable resource for identifying
interventions. More than two decades later, the work of Cornish is still deeply relevant
but his vision has yet to be fully delivered.
Searching for publications that contain the keyword ‘crime script(s)’ or citing
Cornish’s seminal article in the 1994–2018 period, our work has shown that the list of
published crime scripts, although representing only a subset of all crime scripts, has
grown exponentially since Cornish’s seminal article. We noticed that scripts provide
information about different aspects of the crime commission process. For example, there
are studies that explain how some niche crimes happen in specialized industry sectors
(for example, waste crime). To non-specialists at least, the main information provided by
those scripts is the basic procedural structure (that is, the sequence of activities) of the
studied crime. Other studies are concerned with crimes whose commission processes are
simple and/or already known to criminologists (for example, child abuse). For those, the
contribution to knowledge is not in the basic structure but in the variations in the crime
commission process (for example, alternative activities and relative frequencies), along
with the details about the individual or environmental factors that influence it.
Characterized by breadth rather than depth, the pool of crime scripts might reach a
steady state once a script has been published for most crime types. At that point, a change
of direction might be observed, with the generation and quantitative analysis of multiple
and more detailed scripts (that is, tracks) for each crime type. Borrion et al. (2019) also
recommended creating scripts to study wider problems (for example, breach of privacy,
environmental harm). To accompany this development, it is likely that researchers will
start adopting more systematic and transparent crime scripting methods. Already unsu-
pervised algorithms exist that can automatically generate extra sequences of events from
video footage. For such techniques to be adopted by crime analysts, convincing evidence
will need to be produced about their added value.
Besides the lack of information about the quality of crime scripts, another important
shortfall identified in this review is the lack of information about the usefulness of those
scripts. Many authors have explained that their scripts were used to identify crime pre-
vention measures. There is, however, no study that empirically examines the usefulness
of different existing scripting approaches. For this reason, we recommend carrying out
experimental work to ascertain the added value of different crime scripting methods in
comparison with others.
16 European Journal of Criminology 00(0)

Acknowledgements
We are very grateful to the anonymous reviewers and to Professor Ken Pease for their valuable
comments.

Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/
or publication of this article: We have received funding from EPSRC [Grants No EP/G037264/1
and EP/P011896/2].

ORCID iD
Hervé Borrion [Link]

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