TY - JOUR
T1 - Familiar Locations and Similar Activities
T2 - Examining the Contributions of Reliable and Relevant Knowledge in Offenders’ Crime Location Choices
AU - Curtis-Ham, Sophie
AU - Bernasco, Wim
AU - Medvedev, Oleg N.
AU - Polaschek, Devon L.L.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2024 Georgia State University.
PY - 2025/3
Y1 - 2025/3
N2 - This paper examines the recently theorized roles of the reliability and relevance of offenders’ knowledge of locations in their crime location choices. Using discrete choice models, we analyzed offenders’ pre-offense activity locations from police data (home addresses, family members’ home addresses, work, school, prior offenses, victimizations, non-crime incidents, and other police contacts) and 17,054 residential burglaries, 10,353 non-residential burglaries, 1,977 commercial robberies, 4,315 personal robberies, and 4,421 extra-familial sex offenses, in New Zealand. Offenders were most likely to offend where their prior activity locations indicated they had highly reliable and highly relevant knowledge—where they were both highly familiar with the area and had conducted similar activities—and less likely where offenders had less familiarity or less similar activities. The results support a recent extension of crime pattern theory and highlight the importance of including both reliability and relevance factors when modeling or predicting offenders’ crime location choices.
AB - This paper examines the recently theorized roles of the reliability and relevance of offenders’ knowledge of locations in their crime location choices. Using discrete choice models, we analyzed offenders’ pre-offense activity locations from police data (home addresses, family members’ home addresses, work, school, prior offenses, victimizations, non-crime incidents, and other police contacts) and 17,054 residential burglaries, 10,353 non-residential burglaries, 1,977 commercial robberies, 4,315 personal robberies, and 4,421 extra-familial sex offenses, in New Zealand. Offenders were most likely to offend where their prior activity locations indicated they had highly reliable and highly relevant knowledge—where they were both highly familiar with the area and had conducted similar activities—and less likely where offenders had less familiarity or less similar activities. The results support a recent extension of crime pattern theory and highlight the importance of including both reliability and relevance factors when modeling or predicting offenders’ crime location choices.
KW - crime location choice
KW - crime pattern theory
KW - discrete spatial choice
KW - police data
KW - routine activity locations
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85190429087&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85190429087&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1177/10575677241244464
DO - 10.1177/10575677241244464
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85190429087
SN - 1057-5677
VL - 35
SP - 9
EP - 28
JO - International Criminal Justice Review
JF - International Criminal Justice Review
IS - 1
ER -