Behind the Masks

It is a strange fact, but few criminals use disguises when they carry out offences. Surprisingly, this applies even in the case of serious interpersonal crimes. For example, a survey in Canada found that in armed robberies, less than a quarter of offenders try to mask their appearance, while work on stranger rapes in the UK has found that disguises are used in less than one rape in five. Quite clearly, offenders use disguises far less then we might reasonably expect them to, and this helps explain why so little attention has been focused on the subject. Yet, a growing number of researchers now think that some important findings have been overlooked.