Motel - Crime and Illicit Activity

Crime and Illicit Activity

Many auto camps were used as havens and hide-outs for criminals of the 1920s; Bonnie and Clyde had a shootout in the infamous Red Crown Tourist Court near Kansas City on July 20, 1933. A 1940 American Magazine article attributed to J. Edgar Hoover denounced the tourist courts as bases of operation for gangs of desperadoes, claiming that "a large number of roadside cottage groups appear to be not tourist camps but assignation camps" and alleging that "marijuana sellers have been found around such places."

There is today a new home of crime in America, a new home of disease, bribery, corruption, crookedness, rape, white slavery, thievery and murder. There are few major cases in the FBI involving an extended pursuit in which the roadside crime-nest is not responsible for some form of easy lawlessness, for providing convenient hide-outs, for concealing criminals through loose registration regulations... a majority of the 35,000 tourist camps in the U.S. threaten the peace and welfare of the communities upon which these camps have fastened themselves and all of us who form the motoring public. Many of them are not only hide-outs and meeting places, but actual bases of operations from which gangs of desperadoes prey upon the surrounding territory... The files of the FBI are loaded with instances of gangsters who have hidden out in unregulated tourist camps, while officers combed the country for them. There is no regular checking of the registers by detectives — often there are no registers at all, or merely ledgers filled with indiscriminate scrawls and an endless repetition of 'John Smith and wife'... Hence the terse order that goes out daily to law-enforcement agencies when criminals are on the loose: 'KEEP CLOSE WATCH ON TOURIST CAMPS!'

Ultimately, efforts to curb the unconstrained growth of tourist courts were futile as motor courts (as motels were called in the 1930s and 1940s) grew in number and popularity.

Motels have served as a haven for fugitives in the past as the anonymity and a simple registration process helped fugitives to remain ahead of the law. Several changes have reduced the capacity of motels to serve this purpose. In many jurisdictions, regulations now require motel operators to obtain ID from clients and meet specific record-keeping requirements. Credit card transactions, which in the past were more easily approved and took days to report, are now approved or declined on the spot and are instantly recorded in a database, thereby allowing law enforcement access to this information.

Motels which allow a room to be rented inexpensively for less than one full night's stay or which allow a couple not wishing to be seen together publicly to enter a room without passing through the office or lobby area have been nicknamed "no-tell motels" due to their long association with adultery. Even where rooms were rented overnight to middle-class travellers (and not locals or extended-stay clients) there have been ongoing problems with theft of motel property by travellers; everything from waterbeds to television sets to bedspreads and pillows have routinely gone missing in what one 1970s Associated Press report labelled "highway robbery".

Motels/hotels with low rates sometimes serve as housing for people who are not able to afford an apartment or have recently lost their home and need somewhere to stay until further arrangements are made. Motels catering to long-term stays occasionally have kitchenettes or efficiencies, or a motel room with a kitchen. While conventional apartments are more cost-effective with better amenities, tenants unable to pay first and last month's rent in advance or undesirable to residential landlords due to unemployment, criminal records or credit problems do seek low-end residential motels due to perceived lack of viable short-term options.

Some motels in low-income areas have been plagued with drug activity, street prostitution or other crime. In some cases, correctional officials have temporarily placed newly paroled convicts into motels if upon release they do not yet have anywhere to stay. These motels would have daily to monthly rates.

According to the Center for Problem-Oriented Policing,

In the 1930s and 1940s, individually owned and operated motels offered travellers an eclectic, economical array of relatively safe lodging options. In the 1950s, corporations such as Holiday Inn and Howard Johnson's sought to capitalize on the growing national travel market by offering consumers brand-name, standardized lodging. The interstate highways built in the 1950s and 1960s favoured the chains by essentially re-routing motorists away from the older, independent establishments, many of which were located along ageing roads that ran parallel to—but were difficult to access from—the new interstates. In some cases, major motel chains built their properties right at the interstate exits; motorists seeking independent motels had to bypass the chains and venture farther from the interstate to find them. The smaller, non-chain motels had difficulty competing with the large national chains under these circumstances. To survive economically, they began catering to the lower end of the market; some turned into adult motels, while others served as housing for low-income people. Unable to afford upkeep, many of the formerly quaint motels deteriorated and became havens for crime and disorder.

The annual number of calls for service to police departments per room ("CFS/room") as a metric has been used to identify motels with poor surveillance of visitors, inadequate staff or management unwilling to pro-actively exclude known or likely problem tenants from their clientele. Motels implementing lax security in bad neighbourhoods may attract problems such as disturbances (including guests who will not leave or pay), robbery, auto theft and theft from rooms or vehicles, vandalism, public intoxication and alcoholism, drug dealing or clandestine methamphetamine laboratories, fighting, street gang activity, pimping and street prostitution or sexual assaults.

Originally built to accommodate the adventurous traveller of the 1930s and 1940s, motels were marketed as driver-friendly—motorists could drive right up to their rooms. Ironically, what was originally a selling point is now one of the most detrimental aspects of motels, from a crime prevention standpoint. Direct access to rooms allows problem guests and visitors to come and go without being seen by motel personnel. Regardless of size, motels with unimpeded pedestrian and vehicle access to rooms can be difficult to manage, and may have a relatively high number of service calls if they serve a risky clientele.

In severe cases, ongoing unlawful conduct by a motel's clientele impacts the neighbourhood as a whole; some municipalities have adopted a nuisance abatement strategy of attempting to shut down problematic motels under pretexts such as public health and fire safety violations or using taxation laws. City bylaws such as Seattle's "Chronic Nuisance Properties" ordinance have also been used to penalize owners or shut down a business entirely.