Family Matters: Effects of Family Members’ Residential Areas on Crime Location Choice*

Abstract

According to crime pattern theory, offenders are likely to select crime locations within their awareness space. Previous studies have shown that offenders often commit crimes within their current and former residential areas and in areas they previously targeted. However, offenders’ awareness spaces obviously consist of more locations that potentially influence their crime location choices. This study examines the importance of the residential areas of offenders’ family members. Most offenders visit their families at least occasionally and consequently get familiar with the areas in which their families live. It is hypothesized that family members’ residential areas are at increased risk of being targeted. Unique data were used to reconstruct residential histories of the parents, siblings, and children of 7,910 offenders who committed 19,420 offenses. The results of discrete spatial choice models showed that residential areas of family members are indeed at increased risk of being targeted. Current familial residential areas had stronger and more consistent effects than had former familial residential areas. Effects were strongest for the residential areas of offenders’ children compared with those of their parents and siblings. The residential areas of male and female family members affected the crime location choices of male and female offenders equally.

Crime Feeds on Legal Activities: Daily Mobility Flows Help to Explain Thieves’ Target Location Choices

“…Indeed, some location choice research has suggested that offenders are much more likely to offend within their own awareness space than elsewhere. Arguing that for various reasons offenders might still be familiar with their former areas of residence, it has been demonstrated that they are more likely to offend near their former homes than elsewhere (Bernasco and Kooistra 2010;Lammers et al 2015;Menting et al 2016). It has also been established that they are more likely to offend near the homes of family members (Menting et al 2016).…”

“…The census unit was chosen as the spatial unit of analysis because census units have a size similar to those in comparable studies (Bernasco and Block 2009;Clare et al 2009;Menting et al 2016), because census units are approximately equally sized, and because in the study area they are relatively homogenous in terms of population composition. In addition, a practical advantage is that the use of census units does not force us to estimate spillover effects (effects of attributes of nearby units on crime in a focal unit) which is a requirement if small units of analysis are used, such as census blocks or street blocks (Bernasco et al 2013; Groff and Lockwood 2014).…”

“…For use in the analysis, per offence we calculated the distances between the census unit where the offender lived and all other census units in the study area. Following Menting et al (2016) and other prior crime location choice studies, the distance to the offender's own census unit of residence was defined as the average distance between two random points in the census unit, which approximately equals half the square root of the size of the area (Ghosh 1951). A total of 595 incidents (17.3%) were committed in the same census unit as where the offenders lived.…”

“Location, Location, Location”: Effects of Neighborhood and House Attributes on Burglars’ Target Selection

“…Throughout this paper we refer to these entities as 'neighborhoods'. The neighborhoods in this study are similarly constructed to the areas used in most previous discrete spatial choice studies and are comparable or smaller in size (e.g., Lammers et al 2015;Menting et al 2016). On average, the 193 residential neighborhoods have a population of 1287 residents (standard deviation [sd] = 1299), 717 residences (sd = 785) and cover an area of 0.79 (sd = 1.00) square kilometers.…”

Do sports stadiums generate crime on days without matches? A natural experiment on the delayed exploitation of criminal opportunities

“…Although researchers previously studied soccer stadiums' immediate criminogenic effects and demonstrated that crime is elevated around soccer stadiums on game days (e.g., Kurland et al, 2014a, Kurland et al, 2014b, they did not establish that it is indeed soccer game attendees who are responsible for this temporary increase in crime. In fact, a variety of potential offenders could commit non-game day property crime in the stadium's environment, including stadium attendees delaying their exploitation of previously encountered criminal opportunities but also current and previous area residents (Bernasco, 2010, Bernasco andKooistra, 2010), family members of area residents (Menting et al, 2016), and repeat offenders (Lammers et al, 2015). While residents, their family members, or offenders returning to a previous offence location will have committed some of the offences in the stadium's area, they are unlikely to be responsible for all of the property crimes recorded in the 18-months prior to the stadium's closure.…”