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Purpose Using both crime pattern and social disorganization theories, the current study investigates the characteristics of those places that experience high counts of reported sexual crime to police. Methods Socio-demographic factors, land use, specific sexual crime attractors, and ecological variables are used to predict dissemination areas with high counts of sexual crime within a large city using 2180 founded crime events retrieved from a Canadian police database. Results Socio-demographic and ecological factors, as well as the presence of particular sexual crime attractors, characterize these neighborhoods. For example, dissemination areas that have higher percentages of female, male, and single residents, as well as higher counts of rental units, bars, and schools, experience more sexual crimes. Land use does not predict dissemination areas with high counts of sexual crime. Conclusions Both crime pattern and social disorganization theories provide a framework within which the nature of sexual crime places can be better understood. This information could be used to empower community members as to the types of places that are the riskiest for crimes of this nature, as well as to create a conversation about interventions that could be put in place at both the secondary and tertiary levels to prevent future occurrences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose Investigate the changes in the spatial patterns of auto theft in Vancouver, British Columbia during a time of a significant crime drop. Methods Geo-referenced auto theft data, 2003 and 2013, is analyzed considering crime concentrations at the street segment level, kernel density estimation, and a nonparametric spatial point pattern test that identifies the similarity in spatial point patterns. Results Auto theft in Vancouver has dropped significantly, but does not appear to have a stable crime pattern. Specific and limited areas account for the crime drop in auto theft rather than occurring at all places. These places appear to be related to target suitability and, therefore, opportunity. Conclusions The crime drop for auto theft in Vancouver has occurred in particular places. This provides support for the implementation of situational prevention efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives : This paper examines whether different parts of a city "specialize" in different types of property crime. Data : The current paper combines police data from 2011 through 2015 to examine property crime specialization among Detroit's 879 block groups. Crime types include residential burglaries, non-residential burglaries, thefts from buildings, thefts from vehicles, and thefts of vehicles. Results : Only 22 block groups are hot spots for all five property crime types. Some 167 block groups are hot spots for only one of the five crime types. Conclusions : A hot spot for one type of property crime is not necessarily a hot spot for another. We discuss whether a "law of specialization" applies more generally to the urban analysis of crime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates criminal nomadism—an individual's propensity to engage in continuous or intermittent interurban travel as a way to cope with the consequences of their criminal lifestyle and/or as a strategy to adapt to the reality of being a "career criminal." The criminal-career itinerary across Canada of 448 men convicted of sex offenses was reconstructed through individual interviews and analysis of detailed criminal records. Five distinct components of criminal nomadism (i.e., trips, nodes, paths, range, and mesolevel activity space), inspired by crime pattern theory, are suggested and analyzed. Results show that criminal nomadism is the reality of young and educated Whites who have a prolific criminal career interspersed with long incarceration sentences. Nomadic offenders did not wander freely and randomly, but rather seemed to be looking for opportunities and privacy. Sex-offending variables did not make a significant contribution to predictions, suggesting that criminal nomadism is more a general offending phenomenon than something specific to sex offending. This study provides supporting evidence that an extensive criminal career is generally associated with a geographically scattered and nomadic lifestyle. Implications for public policies and future studies are discussed. • This study explores criminal nomadism in a sample of 448 men convicted of sex crimes. • Criminal nomadism is defined as an offender's propensity to engage in interurban travel. • For each participant, the criminal-career itinerary across Canada was reconstructed. • Results suggest a link between an extensive criminal career and a nomadic lifestyle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose Using the rational choice perspective, the current study investigates the impact that the environment and offending behavior have on serial sexual crime event outcomes. Methods The effects of time and place factors, as well as offender modus operandi strategies, on sexual crime event outcomes are tested using Generalized Estimating Equations on a sample of 361 crime events committed by 72 serial sex offenders. Results Time and place do impact serial stranger sexual offenders' modus operandi strategies, but the place characteristics of the crime have more of an effect on the offender's behavior than do the temporal conditions during which the event occurs. Subsequent analyses indicate that temporal and place factors, as well as offender modus operandi strategies, predict whether the offender completes the rape, his reaction to victim resistance, and the level of physical force that he inflicts on the victim, but not whether the victim is forced to commit sexual acts on the offender. Conclusions Serial stranger sexual offenders are effective decision-makers who adapt their strategies to the physical environment in which they commit their crimes, but their degree of rationality can vary as some outcomes are more dependent on the context than the offender and his actions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The study examines whether the use of forensic awareness strategies increases the chance of avoiding police detection in sexual homicide. Methods: Logistic and negative binomial regression analyses are used on a sample of 350 cases of sexual homicide – 250 solved and 100 unsolved cases – in order to determine if forensic awareness strategies are related to the status of the case (i.e., solved versus unsolved) and the number of days before body recovery, while controlling for certain victim characteristics. Results: Although an offender’s use of precautions does not seem to increase the offender’s chance of avoiding police detection, some modus operandi behavior adopted by the offender at the crime scene may help to delay the discovery of the victim, and thus delay the offender’s apprehension. Moreover, the likelihood of whether or not a sexual murderer is apprehended varied significantly across victim characteristics. Conclusion: Some offenders seem to exhibit rational thinking in targeting certain types of victims and in adopting certain strategies in order to delay body recovery. Number of days until body recovery is a more appropriate measure of detection avoidance than case status, as it is not biased by administrative rules or timing of data entry. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Purpose: This study examines distances to crime among illegal drug buyers while controlling for buyer, drug, and destination characteristics. Methods: Geocoded arrests for drug buyers in an urban municipality, over a three year period, spatially identify major drug markets. Negative binomial regression is used to model compositional characteristics of drug arrestees and contextual effects of markets on distance to arrest (n =4,082). Results: Trip distance to drug purchase arrest varies by drug market. Being white, and having prior contact with the criminal justice system correlated with longer trip distances. Additional compositional effects vary by drug type. Conclusions: In line with prior journey to crime research and crime pattern theory, illicit drug buyers are arrested in close proximity of their homes. Future research should consider the extent to which short aggregate market distances reflect policing differentials and close social ties. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Objective: Crime prevention has entered a new, more robust phase of research activity and holds greater relevance to policy and practice today than ever before. It stands as an important component of an overall strategy to reduce crime. This paper sets out a modest proposal for a new crime policy to help build a safer, more sustainable society. Materials and methods: Narrative meta-review of the crime prevention literature. Results: The central features include: ensuring that the highest quality scientific research is at center stage in the policy-making process; overcoming the “short-termism” politics of the day; and striking a greater balance between crime prevention and crime control. Both simulation studies and experiences in Washington State show that early prevention can reduce crime, save money, and reduce the need for costly incarceration. Conclusions: Quality criminological research should be used to strike a policy balance between crime prevention and crime control. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Purpose: The current study examines significant variations in criminal achievement across sex offenders. To examine the “successful” sex offender, the study proposes a concept of achievement in sexual offending defined as the ability to maximise the payoffs of a crime opportunity while minimizing the costs. Methods: The study is based on a sample of convicted adult male sex offenders using retrospective longitudinal data. Results: The study findings show a wide variation in criminal achievement, a variation that is not correlated with the severity of sentences meted out or the actuarial risk scores obtained by these offenders. Those offenders who specialize in sex crimes were shown to be the most productive and least detected offenders. Two types of successful offenders emerge, the first relying on his conventional background in targeting a victim that can be repeatedly abused for a long period without detection. The second is a younger offender that is successful in the sense of being able to complete aggressions on multiple victims. Conclusions: Results suggest that the successful sex offender is not “detected” once he enters the criminal justice system, nor is he handled in a way that may deter him from sexually reoffending in the future. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Purpose: To investigate the importance of immediate spatial neighbors when investigating local crime patterns. Methods: Local indicators of spatial association are used to identify local crime clusters. The classification scheme of these local crime clusters is then modeled in a multinomial logistic regression. Results: The results show that immediate spatial neighbors are important for understanding local crime patterns. Though (positive) spatial autocorrelation has long been known to be present with crime data, this analysis suggests that negative spatial autocorrelation (if present) has a significantly different implication. Generally speaking, when predicting a local crime cluster type, the immediate spatial neighbors are more important for correct prediction. As such, a low local crime area that is surrounded by high crime areas presents itself as a high crime area in the regression results. Conclusions: Therefore, efforts to understand the criminal nature of an area must not consider that area in isolation. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

One of the major trends in policing sweeping across democratic societies since the mid-1990s is a management approach commonly known as COMPSTAT. Despite widespread global adoption, empirical evaluation of the impact of COMPSTAT lags behind popular accounts of its crime control benefits. Purpose: This article evaluates the crime control impact of Queensland Police Service's version of COMPSTAT known as “Operational Performance Reviews” (OPRs). Method: A mixed model analytic approach was used to assess the role of OPRs in explaining spatial and temporal variations in crime patterns across Queensland's 29 police districts. Results: Analysis of the impact of OPRs on reported crime (specifically assaults, robberies and unlawful entries) suggests major differences between police districts, and that some districts are driving overall statewide crime reductions, whilst others confound positive effects of implementation of OPRs in Queensland. Conclusions: The results demonstrate that the crime drop experienced throughout Queensland found in prior research (Mazerolle et al., 2007) is most likely attributable to a small number of police districts. The implication of these findings is that a number of districts could (and should) be called-upon during maturation of Queensland's OPRs to reduce specific crime problems in their districts and facilitate ongoing crime reductions across the state. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

While most group offending is not well organized, it is generally assumed that high levels of organization can be found in group offending that generates revenue, such as white-collar crime, drug sales, and smuggling drugs or humans. The organizational structure of international drug smuggling has typically been viewed as highly rational and formally structured. Employing interviews with thirty-four federal prisoners convicted of smuggling large volumes of cocaine into the United States, this study explored the organizational structure of high level international drug smuggling. The subjects described a general lack of formal structure and depicted the drug smuggling operations as composed of isolated work groups without formal connections among each other. These findings bring into question the idea that these groups are rationally organized around pursuing efficiency and support recent research that suggests network security or minimizing risk are key organizing principles of drug trading organizations. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

To test for statistically significant changes in crime rates across neighbourhoods in Saskatoon, Canada resulting from social restrictions within the natural experiment of the COVID-19 pandemic. A spatial point pattern test is used to identify statistically significant change in crime patterns across Saskatoon's neighbourhoods because of COVID-19. These changes are analyzed with variables from social disorganization theory constructs using multinomial logistic regression. The results indicate a city-wide decline in crime during the COVID-19 lockdown. However, at the local level, socially disorganized dissemination areas experience increases in certain crime types. Variables representing the constructs of social disorganization theory are generally able to predict these changes, suggesting the need to examine changes in crime at different geographic levels. COVID-19 has changed the patterns of crime in Saskatoon, but most often in theoretically expected ways. Local changes are critical to understand crime during a pandemic and are instructive for policing agencies as well as social service providers during such an exceptional event. • All crime types are down resulting from COVID-19 and the associated social restrictions. • The spatial patterns of crime during social restrictions have shifted. • Not all neighbourhoods have experienced changes in crime. • Most increases occurred in areas with lower income suggesting social justice issues resulting from COVID-19. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current study simultaneously examines the effects of three different characteristics of the built environment based on the theoretical conceptualizations of density, diversity, and design (3D). By using data of 211,155 street segments in the Southern California metropolitan region across 130 cities, we estimated a set of negative binomial regression models including the 3D measures of the built environment, while accounting for the effects of social structural characteristics of place. Furthermore, the current study examines the potential moderating effects of each 3D feature on crime. We found that higher levels of business density are consistently associated with higher levels of crime. The diversity measure is associated with moderately higher levels of crime, whereas the design measure consistently exhibited a negative relationship with crime. Furthermore, we found that the diversity and design measures moderated the business density relationship with crime. The results of the current study suggest that it is necessary to examine the different types of physical environment simultaneously to understand the effects of physical environment and the spatial patterns of crime. • Higher levels of business density are consistently associated with higher levels of crime. • The diversity is associated with moderately higher levels of crime. • The design measure consistently exhibited a crime-reducing effect. • It is necessary to examine the different types of physical environment simultaneously. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Existing research on modernization and crime patterns largely focused on the volume of crime and its variation over periods of modernization. The empirical studies predominantly used cross-national data based on Western advanced capitalist societies and developing countries. To further discover patterns of crime during the modernization process in non-Western settings, the present study took a different approach. It examined the rate of change for property and violent crimes in China; and it employed longitudinal methods to analyze the crime series. The findings extended the conclusions of modernization theories regarding general crime patterns during modernization. Theoretical implications of the findings are discussed. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This article provides a systematic analysis of vigilante homicides that occurred in Ghana, West Africa, during 1990–2000. Through the use of newspaper accounts, the study identified the socio-demographic characteristics of victims, spatial distribution, modus operandi, and the circumstances of death. The data suggested that young urban males suspected or accused of robbery, larceny, and other forms of theft were most often victims of vigilante killings. Mob attacks were spontaneous and the assaults involved the use of weapons available on the scene, such as stones, sticks, clubs, and personal weapons. Factors contributing to the escalation of vigilantism in the society included an under-resourced police force, poor police-civilian relations, burgeoning crime rate, a slow and overburdened judiciary, heightened public fear of crime, and a breakdown in traditional methods of dispute resolution. The article also reports on a survey that targeted the attitudes of a sample of law enforcement officers towards vigilantism in Ghana. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Analyzes crime trends and patterns in Ghana. Level of crime in developed regions; Increase of crime rates from northern to southern Ghana; Highest recorded offense.

To investigate the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on conventional crime and organized crime in Mexico City, Mexico. Mexico City's Attorney General's Office reported crime data, covering domestic violence, burglary, robbery, vehicle theft, assault-battery, homicides, kidnapping, and extortion. We use an event study for the intertemporal variation across the 16 districts (municipalities) in Mexico City for 2019 and 2020. We find a sharp decrease on crimes related to domestic violence, burglary, and vehicle theft; a decrease during some weeks on crimes related to assault-battery and extortion, and no effects on crimes related to robbery, kidnapping, and homicides. While our results show a decline in conventional crime during the COVID- 19 pandemic, organized crime remains steady. These findings have policy implications for catastrophic events around the world, as well as possible national security issues in Mexico. • We consider the effect of the COVID-19 stay-at-home order on crime in Mexico City. • We explore five different types of conventional crime and three types of organized crime. • Conventional crime, including domestic violence, burglary, and vehicle theft, decreased sharply. • Organized crime remained stagnant after the lockdown. • The stay-at-home order reduced conventional crime but had no noticeable effect on activities from organized crime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given the spatial nature of offender and target behavior, what do standard ecological studies of crime aggregating measures to different geographic units actually tell us? This study used a simple stylized simulation model of crime patterns based on offenders, an exponential distance decay function based on Euclidean distance to capture their typical mobility patterns when committing offenses, and immobile targets. There were four key results. First, although a measure of targets can explain much of the variance in micro-level models, knowing where offenders live, and their typical distances traveled to offending, greatly improved the model performance. Second, accounting for the typical spatial movement of offenders before aggregating to larger units produces better results based on explanatory power. Third, the explanatory power of targets alone was much weaker when aggregating to larger units despite the fact that the simulated model of crime events was entirely based on micro processes, highlighting that variance explained is distinct from causal processes. Fourth, knowing how offenders behave in target-rich versus target-poor environment impacts the results considerably. The findings demonstrated the consequences of a spatially explicit model of offender and target behavior for ecological studies of crime that aggregate measures to geographic units that are either at the micro-, meso-, or macro-level. • Simulates crime based on micro model of offender mobility and targets. • Accounting for offender mobility improves model fit in micro models. • Meso aggregation with offender mobility improves model fit. • Offenders matter more than targets in macro aggregation. • Offender behavior in target-rich environments is important. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To examine the variability in the 'journey-to-crime' and 'journey-to-victimization' in stranger rapes when disaggregated by offender motive. Using crime pattern theory as the theoretical framework, a series of pre-offense factors are used to explain these differences. Two-step cluster analysis is first used to identify motive subtypes in 1009 stranger female rapes from a French police database. Kruskal-Wallis analyses then test for significant differences in distances traveled between the motivational groups. Finally, a series of negative binomial regressions are conducted to predict three distance measures: offender's residence to crime scene, victim's residence to crime scene, and victim's residence to offender's residence. The average distances traveled for both offenders and victims to the crime scene, and between their residences, varied by motive. Findings from the regression models indicated that while offender motive is important, environmental characteristics and victim activity at the time of the assault also predict the distances traveled for both individuals. Determining the most likely motive of the offender, in conjunction with other offense characteristics that would be known at the time of investigation, has the potential to provide law enforcement officials with an indication of the unknown offender's geographic behavior in active rape cases. • It is possible to deduce an unknown offender's motive through crime scene behavior • Distance traveled by offenders and victims differs by motive to offend • Offender motivation is the strongest predictor of offender journey-to-crime • Environmental factors most strongly predict the journey-to-victimization • Environmental factors best explain the distance between victim and offender residences [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]