Age and the distance to crime

Abstract

The journey-to-crime literature consistently shows that the distance to crime is short, particularly for violent crimes. Recent research has revealed methodological concerns regarding various (improper) groupings of data (nesting effects). In this article we investigate one such nesting effect: the relationship between age and the distance to crime. Contrary to much of the research that investigates this phenomenon, using a large incident-based data set of more than 100,000 crime trips, we find that the relationship between age and the distance to crime is best described as quadratic but this quadratic relationship is not universal across all crime classifications.

Daily crime flows within a city

“…We also translate their concept of "insiders vs. outsiders" to "residents vs. visitors" for purposes of this presentation. Groff and McEwen (2007) confirmed the Burgess point that many crimes occur at noteworthy distances from the home of offender and/or victim (see also Bernasco 2010;Bernasco and Block 2011;Rossmo et al 2012;Townsley and Sidebottom 2010;Andresen et al 2014;Johnson 2014;Pyle 1974;Hakim and Rengert 1981). Moreover, Frank et al (2013) showed that offenders tend to go in certain directions, such as towards malls or entertainment zones.…”

Journey-to-Crime Distances of Residential Burglars in China Disentangled: Origin and Destination Effects

“…Besides gender differences, age differences in journey-to-crime distances were found [43]. Andresen, Frank [14] showed that older offenders are more likely to commit offenses outside of their home areas than younger offenders. Furthermore, group offenders often travel further to commit crimes compared to solo offenders [15].…”

“…Neglecting any of the three aspects might lead to wrong conclusions regarding journey-to-crime distance patterns. Several studies have already focused on how journey-to-crime distances vary between offenders [14][15][16] and between target areas [7,13,15]. However, none of these accounted for origin effects.…”

“…Using a multilevel model, they showed how the variation in journey-to-crime distances could be decomposed into both inter-offender-level and intra-offender-level differences. Furthermore, many studies have shown that the individual-level differences cannot be ignored when analyzing journey-to-crime distances [7,[13][14][15][16][17].…”

Review: Principles of Geographical Profiling

“…Additionally, several studies by the Journey-to-Crime focused on the decrease of the offending predisposition as distance increases have proven than certain variables, like age [14,15], ethnicity or nationality [16][17][18], Modus Operandi [18,19] or crime typology [20] affect the relationship between distance and the likelihood of committing a crime.…”