Early In 1796, the
London magistrate Patrick Colquhoun observed that "[i]t rarely happens that thieves go upon the highway, or commit burglaries, until the money they have previously acquired is exhausted," and that "...without a safe and ready market he [the thief] is undone." Recognizing the key role played by dealers in stolen goods in facilitating profit from theft and motivation for offenders to steal and with an aim to influence harsher legislation and sentencing of professional
fences, the American jurisprudentialist
Jerome Hall emphasised the role of the professional fence in the marketing of stolen goods and created a
typology that distinguished between professional fences, part-time dealers, and those who knowingly buy stolen goods for their own consumption. A number of
ethnography studies (e.g. Klockars 1974; Henry 1977 and Steffensmeir 1986) hinted at the influence of the market for stolen goods upon levels of theft of certain goods. A systematic study of the various ways that stolen goods are stored, sold and bought – going beyond the previous focus upon the guilty mind and level of involvement of dealers and consumers – was conducted by
Mike Sutton, who created a fivefold market typology based on his interviews with expert prolific thieves, inexperienced thieves, fences, drug dealers and stolen goods consumers. In 1998, the UK
Home Office published Sutton's report proposing a systematic framework for researching and tackling local stolen goods markets.
Modern Current development of the market reduction approach (MRA) has its origins in a 1995
British Journal of Criminology paper:
Supply by Theft that was followed by a 1998
United Kingdom Government Home Office research study entitled Handling Stolen Goods and Theft: A Market Reduction Approach, both written by Mike Sutton Further work on implementing and process evaluation of the MRA was conducted by Schneider. Described by Marcus Felson as "...a simple idea in an important article" and as classic research, Sutton's concept of MRA has had an influence upon theory and practice regarding stolen goods markets and markets for other illicit commodities. Some criminologists have incorporated Sutton's work on stolen goods markets to explain the issue of offenders’ capacity to commit crimes. The general MRA principles have influenced work beyond research into markets for theft of high volume consumer goods, since the MRA is described as underpinning recent research into illicit markets for cultural artefacts and as a useful method for tackling the trade in endangered species. Sutton's 1998 stolen goods
Handling Report includes findings from the nationally representative
British Crime Survey (1994). This revealed that 11 percent of those questioned had bought stolen goods in the preceding five years, and that 70 percent believed that some of their neighbours had stolen goods in their homes. The
Handling Report was followed by a more comprehensive MRA policing guide to stolen goods markets. ==Application==