The effects of crime generators, crime attractors, and offender anchor points on the distribution of street robberies across the nearly 25,000 census blocks of Chicago are examined. The analysis includes a wide array of activities and facilities that are expected to attract criminals and generate crime. These include a variety of legal and illegal businesses and infrastructural accessibility facilitators. In addition to these crime attractors and generators, the role of the presence of motivated offenders' anchor points, as measured by offenders' residence and gang activity, is assessed. The analysis

Using epidemiological techniques for testing disease contagion, it has recently been found that in the wake of a residential burglary, the risk to nearby homes is temporarily elevated. This paper demonstrates the ubiquity of this phenomenon by analyzing spacetime patterns of burglary in 10 areas, located in five different countries. While the precise patterns vary, for all areas, houses within 200m of a burgled home were at an elevated risk of burglary for a period of at least two weeks. For three of the five countries, differences in these patterns may partly be explained by simple differences in target density. The findings inform theories of crime concentration and offender targeting strategies, and have implications for crime forecasting and crime reduction more generally.

Why do robbers choose a particular area to commit an offense? Do they rob close to home? Do they search for areas with suitable and attractive targets? What keeps them away from certain areas? To answer these questions, a model is developed of how robbers choose target areas. The model draws on various theoretical and empirical traditions, which include environmental criminology, journey to crime research, gang research, and social disorganization theory. Testing the model on cleared robbery cases in Chicago in the years 1996–1998, we demonstrate that robbery location choice is related to characteristics of target areas, to areas where offenders live, to joint characteristics of the resident and target areas, and to characteristics of the offenders themselves. The presence of illegal markets and other crime generators and crime attractors make areas attractive for robbers, whereas collective efficacy seems to keep them out. Distance as well as racial and ethnic segregation restrict the mobility of offenders.

Many offenses take place close to where the offender lives. Anecdotal evidence suggests that offenders also might commit crimes near their former homes. Building on crime pattern theory and combining information from police records and other sources, this study confirms that offenders who commit robberies, residential burglaries, thefts from vehicles, and assaults are more likely to target their current and former residential areas than similar areas they never lived in. In support of the argument that spatial awareness mediates the effects of past and current residence, it also is shown that areas of past and present residence are more likely to be targeted if the offender lived in the area for a long time instead of briefly and if the offender has moved away from the area only recently rather than a long time ago. The theoretical implications of these findings and their use for investigative purposes are discussed, and suggestions for future inquiry are made.

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This study assesses the effects of attractiveness, opportunity and accessibility to burglars on the residential burglary rates of urban neighborhoods, combining two complementary lines of investigation that have been following separate tracks in the literature. As a complement to standard measures of attractiveness and opportunity, we introduce and specify a spatial measure of the accessibility of neighborhoods to burglars. Using data on about 25, 000 attempted and completed residential burglaries committed in the period 1996–2001 in the city of The Hague, the Netherlands, we study the variation in burglary rates across its 89 residential neighborhoods. Our results suggest that all three factors, attractiveness, opportunity and accessibility to burglars, pull burglars to their target neighborhoods.

Using data on residential burglaries and residential burglars inKey words: target selection; burglary; co-offending; journey-to-crime; distance decay Although substantial progress has been made in theoretical research on co-offending (Weerman, 2003), empirical research on the causes and consequences of co-offending appears to be relatively scarce. Already a decade ago Kleemans (1996, pp. 116-117) addressed the lack of knowledge regarding the role of co-offending in spatial target selection by burglars. Do solitary burglars choose different target areas than offender groups? And if so, are these differences related to the features of potential targets such as value, accessibility, supervision, and visibility? Are they also related to the areas where solitary offenders and offender groups perform their routine activities, in particular their areas of residence?This paper attempts to contribute to understanding these issues. It reports on an empirical study addressing the effects of co-offending on the choice of target areas by burglars, and aims to answer two questions. The first is the question as to which criteria burglars use in choosing an area for committing a burglary. The second question is whether burglar groups use other location choice criteria than solitary burglars.

This article analyzes how street robbers decide on where to attack their victims. Using data on nearly 13,000 robberies, on the approximately 18,000 offenders involved in these robberies, and on the nearly 25,000 census blocks in the city of Chicago, we utilize the discrete choice framework to assess which criteria motivate the location decisions of street robbers. We demonstrate that they attack near their own homes, on easily accessible blocks, where legal and illegal cash economies are present, and that these effects spill over to adjacent blocks.