Uncovering the Spatial Patterning of Crimes

Abstract

Objectives: The main objective of this study was to see if the characteristics of offenders' crimes exhibit spatial patterning in crime neutral areas by examining the relationship between simulated travel routes of offenders along the physical road network and the actual locations of their crimes in the same geographic space. Method: This study introduced a Criminal Movement model (CriMM) that simulates travel patterns of known offenders. Using offenders' home locations, locations of major attractors (e.g., shopping centers), and variations of Dijkstra's shortest path algorithm we modeled the routes that offenders are likely to take when traveling from their home to an attractor. We then compare the locations of offenders' Downloaded from crimes to these paths and analyze their proximity characteristics. This process was carried out using data on 7,807 property offenders from five municipalities in the Greater Vancouver Regional District (GVRD) in British Columbia, Canada. Results: The results show that a great proportion of crimes tend to be located geographically proximal to the simulated travel paths with a distance decay pattern characterizing the distribution of distance measures. Conclusion: These results lend support to Crime Pattern Theory and the idea that there is an underlying pattern to crimes in crime neutral areas.

Spatial Dimensions of the Effect of Neighborhood Disadvantage on Delinquency*

“…Some-but not all-of the theoretical arguments linking extralocal neighborhood characteristics to offending assume that youth are engaging in criminal conduct in areas closest to their residential neighborhoods and that the risk of offending decreases the farther an adolescent moves away from his or her home. Although this is assumption is supported in the empirical literature (e.g., Bernasco, 2010;Bernasco et al, 2013;Brantingham and Brantingham, 1984;Reid et al, 2014;Rengert, Piquero, and Jones, 1999), the data available in the NLSY97 preclude a direct assessment of the locations where offending occurs. This data limitation is problematic as the situational opportunity explanation of the negative effect of extralocal disadvantage assumes that behaviors are occurring nearby.…”

Living near violence: How proximity to violence shapes perceptions of police effectiveness and confidence in police

“…not consider conditions across the neighborhood as a whole (Reid et al, 2014). Studies in behavioral geography suggest that a great deal of an individual's daily activities occur within a discrete and well-defined activity space (Brantingham & Brantingham, 1981;Golledge & Stimson, 1997).…”

“…While the activity spaces of individuals have been shown to vary in size, the spatial extent of the influence of crime events occurring within, or spatially proximate to, one's activity space reflects a distance-decay function (Groff & Lockwood, 2014;Reid et al, 2014). The likelihood of an individual having knowledge of a violent event occurring within their neighborhood, and the potential for exposure to police responding to that event, decreases as distance between their home and the event location increases.…”

Where to next? Importance of directional considerations in offender geo‐spatial sequential decision making

“…Johnson is surely correct in his assertion that those involved in modelling or predicting offender spatial movement must consider the geo‐spatial decision‐making choices, strategies and processes of offenders not only in terms of journey to crime but also the sequential nature of decisions, the direction to targets from an offenders homebase, and the dispersion pattern of their offences against a non‐uniform backdrop of viable targets. In fact, over the past few years, several researchers, including myself, have begun to look at offender geo‐spatial data in precisely this way, by analysing changes in sequential decision making, spatial and directional biases (Reid, Frank, Iwanski, Dabbaghian, & Brantingham, ) across serial crime, and offence dispersion patterns from both psychological (Goodwill & Alison, ) and criminological perspectives (Castanzo, Halperin, & Gale, ; Frank, Andresen, & Brantingham, ; Wiles & Costello, ).…”