An Epidemiological Study of Burglary Offenders: Trends and Predictors of Self-Reported Arrests for Burglary in the United States, 2002-2013

Abstract

Burglary is serious property crime with a relatively high incidence, and has been shown to be variously associated with other forms of criminal behavior. Unfortunately, an epidemiological understanding of burglary and its correlates is largely unknown. Using publicuse data collected between 2002 and 2013 as part of the National Study on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), the current study compared self-reported burglars with and without criminal history.The unadjusted prevalence estimates of burglary were statistically different for those with a prior arrest history (4.7%) compared to those without an arrest history (0.02%) which is a 235-fold difference. Those with an arrest history were more likely to report lower educational attainment, to have lower income, to have moved more than 3 times in the past 5 years, and to use alcohol, tobacco, illicit drugs, and engage in binge drinking. Moreover, those with prior arrest histories were younger and more likely to be male. There is considerable heterogeneity among burglars with criminal history indicating substantially greater behavioral risk.Keywords: burglary, burglars, epidemiology, criminal career, criminal history 2 Introduction Burglary, the unlawful entry of a residence or business to perpetrate theft or some other felony, is a serious property offense that commonly is punished by prison confinement and produces tens of millions of dollars annually in direct, indirect, and intangible costs (Wickramasekera, Wright, Elsey, Murray, & Tubeuf, 2015). In the United States, burglary is a moderately common crime with an incidence of nearly two million arrests annually according to the Uniform Crime Reports (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2014) and three million victimizations according to the National Crime Victimization Survey (Truman & Langton, 2015). Burglary is associated with a range of negative consequences for burglary victims including loss of property and damage to one's home, emotional trauma, stressful hypervigiliance due to the violation of privacy, increased anxiety, depression, and fear of crime, and others. Like all criminal offenses, there is substantial heterogeneity among burglary offenders in terms of their broader criminal career (Bouhana, Johnson, & Porter, 2014; Hargreaves & Francis, 2014;Shover, 1996), motivation for perpetrating burglary (Maguire, 1988; Wright, Logie, & Decker, 1995), geographic and temporal issues relating to burglary (Johnson, 2008; Johnson & Bowers, 2004; Kocsis & Irwin, 1998), and the association of burglary to other forms of crime (Fox & Farrington, 2012;Shover, 1996;Steffensmeier, Harris, & Painter-Davis, 2015). Thus, burglary can denote a one-off adolescent prank by a juvenile offender, an opportunistic offense by an offender enmeshed in an antisocial lifestyle, or a carefully planned instrumental crime 1 Given the extensive monetary and emotional costs imposed by burglary, a large segment of the burglary literature focuses on home security, burglary prevention techniques, and forensic issues relating to arre...

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