Search

Do informal and formal mechanisms of guardianship work together to reduce residential burglary? In this article we argue that informal guardianship moderates the relationship between formal mechanisms of guardianship and residential burglary. Formal guardianship requires some level of social cohesion and trust to be effective against residential burglary. We test this argument with the use of robust panel quantile methods controlling for time effects, spatial effects, and alternative explanations. Using Mexico City neighborhood crime and census data, we show evidence of a moderating weakening effect of informal guardianship on the previous relationship, particularly in deprived neighborhoods and only in the upper quantiles of the residential burglary distribution. In addition, the moderation effects seem to have weakened over time. In sum, the combination of guardianship mechanisms seems to have been more effective in high burglary risk deprived neighborhoods, although their combination seems to have become less relevant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Data on the decision-making process of residential burglars at the micro-level are scarce. Furthermore, to the best of our knowledge, none of the related studies have investigated multiple relationships between the design features of a target, a burglar's assessment of effort and risk involved in the crime, and the final decision on target selection. This study aimed to test the hypothesis that a burglar's judgment of how difficult (ease of intrusion) and how risky (risk of detection) it would be to break into a certain target may mediate the relationship between the target's design features and target selection. The experiment using virtual reality was conducted to obtain more credible data by maximizing the immersion of participants, and the collected data were analyzed using path analysis. The results showed that the assessment of ease of intrusion and risk of detection for a burglary target served as mediators between the design features of the target and the decision on target selection. This study also found that the ease of intrusion and risk of detection were not evaluated independently but instead had influential relationships. These results suggest that when developing design strategies for burglary prevention, it is important to check the overall level of ease and risk of the possible intrusion routes of a target and their correlation by considering various environmental factors around the intrusion routes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban morphology plays a significant role in shaping the spatial distribution of crime. This study takes an environmental criminology perspective on crime and examines how residential burglary is related to two typical morphology features—housing density and composition, which were rarely concerned by previous research. Wuhan, the largest city in central China, was selected as the case study. We first applied a new urban morphology approach to identify the morphology category of each neighborhood based on its housing density and composition. Negative binomial regression models were adopted to evaluate the impacts of morphology factors on the residential burglary at the neighborhood level while controlling for socio-demographic features, transport facilities, housing price and age. Results suggest that both housing composition and density are significantly associated with residential burglary. In particular, one unit increase in Floor Space Index, an indicator of housing density and Ground Space Index, an indicator of housing composition could lead to an 11.9% and 9.1% increase in the incident rate of residential burglary. The 'block' and 'strip' composition exert more substantial impacts than 'point' composition; neighborhoods with 'high' and 'medium' residences tend to be more dangerous than neighborhoods with 'low' residences. Results of this study reveal that communities must be designed with the relationship between risk levels of residential burglary and the ways by which communities are designed in mind. Implications regarding burglary prevention and neighborhood planning practices are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous empirical studies on the correlation between residential burglary and concentrated disadvantage (CD) in Latin America commonly omit the spatial elements of the relationship. Using Mexico City (CDMX) residential burglary data for the period 2016 to 2018, we examine the predictive capacity of concentrated disadvantage in relation to residential burglary patterns, using a Geographically Weighted Regression approach to check whether their correlation varies across CDMX police quadrants. Controlling for relevant structural variables associated with residential burglary in previous studies, we find that the relationship between CD and residential burglary is positive in 844 out of 846 police quadrants (99.7%) and significantly much steeper in some quadrants than others –up to four times the median local slope. Thus, one key implication is that as this relationship is affected by spatial heterogeneity, traditional regression-to-the-mean analyses may misinform evidence-based crime prevention policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: We investigate the spatio-temporal variation of monthly residential burglary frequencies across neighborhoods as a function of crime generators, street network features and temporally and spatially lagged burglary frequencies. In addition, we evaluate the performance of the model as a forecasting tool. Methods: We analyze 48 months of police-recorded residential burglaries across 20 neighborhoods in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, in combination with data on the locations of urban facilities (crime generators), frequencies of other crime types, and street network data. We apply the Integrated Laplace Approximation method, a Bayesian forecasting framework that is less computationally demanding than prior frameworks. Results: The local number of retail stores, the number of street robberies perpetrated and the closeness of the local street network are positively related to residential burglary. Inclusion of a general spatio-temporal interaction component significantly improves forecasting performance, but inclusion of spatial proximity or temporal recency components does not. Discussion: Our findings on crime generators and street network characteristics support evidence in the literature on environmental correlates of burglary. The significance of spatio-temporal interaction indicates that residential burglary is spatio-temporally concentrated. Our finding that recency and proximity of prior burglaries do not contribute to the performance of the forecast, probably indicates that relevant spatio-temporal interaction is limited to fine-grained spatial and temporal units of analysis, such as days and street blocks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: Test the efficacy of swift resident notification for preventing subsequent burglaries within near-repeat high-risk zones (NR-HRZ). Methods: The experiment was conducted in Baltimore County, Maryland and Redlands, California. As residential burglaries came to the attention of the police, a trickle randomization process was used to assign each micro-level NR-HRZ (measured 800 ft, 244 m from the burglary location) and associated buffer (400 ft, 122 m) to treatment or control. Treatment was performed by uniform agency volunteers and consisted of swift notification to residents in the area of increased risk of burglary victimization. Treatment and control zones were compared for differences in the mean count of residential burglary using independent samples t tests. Two surveys were administered to gauge the impact of the program: one targeted residents and one targeted at the treatment providers. Results: There was limited evidence that the treatment reduced follow-on burglaries. The effectiveness of the intervention varied depending on the post-intervention time period being considered. The results of the community survey suggested that: (1) the most frequent crime prevention actions taken by residents were relatively low-cost and low-effort and (2) notification did not increase resident fear of burglary. The treatment provider survey found that the program was effective at increasing the level of engagement between volunteers and the agency and had positive impacts on community perception. Conclusions: This research demonstrated that law enforcement volunteers can be used to undertake programs that have positive impacts on police-community relations. Limitations included low near-repeat counts, delays in discovering/reporting burglary, and staffing constraints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on the spatial dimension of crime has developed significantly over the past few decades. An important aspect of this research is the visualization of this dimension and its underlying risk across space. However, most methods of such visualization, and subsequent analyses, only consider crime data or, perhaps, a population at risk in a crime rate. Risk terrain modeling (RTM) provides an alternative to such methods and can incorporate the entire environmental backcloth, data permitting. To date, the RTM literature has dominantly focused on violent crime in the United States. In this paper, we apply RTM to property crime victimization (residential burglary) in Vancouver, Canada. We are able to show that not only does RTM have applicability in a Canadian context but provides insight into nonviolent victimization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Risk terrain modelling (RTM) is emerging as an effective approach for predicting how and where crimes concentrate within cities and regions. However, in its previous applications there is a tendency to overestimate the influence of external environmental risks and preventive factors. Most studies applying RTM have investigated factors associated with the characteristics of the urban setting, whilst only a limited number have focused on identifying the risks associated with the availability and the characteristics of potential targets for criminals. This study uses RTM to identify the spatial risk and protective factors related to residential burglaries in the city of Milan, Italy. Factors considered are the neighbourhood- and target-related contextual factors, the exposure to crime and potential mitigating strategies. The results show that when the place and target of the offence are intrinsically related a target-oriented approach to select factors is useful for increasing the understanding of why some locations are most likely to experience future crimes. Indeed, the peculiarities of the target itself are integral to understan both the decision-making of criminals and the overall level of crime risk. Related policy implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: This study explores preference variation in location choice strategies of residential burglars. Applying a model of offender target selection that is grounded in assertions of the routine activity approach, rational choice perspective, crime pattern and social disorganization theories, it seeks to address the as yet untested assumption that crime location choice preferences are the same for all offenders. Methods: Analyzing detected residential burglaries from Brisbane, Australia, we apply a random effects variant of the discrete spatial choice model to estimate preference variation between offenders across six location choice characteristics. Furthermore, in attempting to understand the causes of this variation we estimate how offenders' spatial target preferences might be affected by where they live and by their age. Results: Findings of this analysis demonstrate that while in the aggregate the characteristics of location choice are consistent with the findings from previous studies, considerable preference variation is found between offenders. Conclusions: This research highlights that current understanding of choice outcomes is relatively poor and that existing applications of the discrete spatial choice approach may underestimate preference variation between offenders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces two new methods for the exploratory analysis of the spatial and temporal dynamics of residential burglary patterns. The first is a conditional spatial Markov chain which considers the extent to which a location's probability of experiencing a residential burglary in a future period is related to the prevalence of residential burglaries in its surrounding neighborhood in an initial period. The second measure extends this conditional perspective to examine the joint evolution of residential burglary in a location and its surrounding neighborhood. These methods are applied to a case study of residential burglary patterns in Mesa, Arizona over the period October 2005 through December 2009. Strong patterns of spatial clustering of burglary activity are present in each year, and this clustering is found to have an important influence on both the conditional and joint evolution of burglary activity across space and time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Exploratory Spatial Data Analysis (ESDA) is applied to the spatial pattern of residential burglaries in Tokyo, which was caused by new lock-breaking tools, called "lock-picking". The official crime records of residential burglary and breaking and entering in the 23 wards in Tokyo from 1996 to 2000 (n = 41151) are aggregated by census tract and then matched with the national census data in 1997. The burglary rates are calculated by house type: detached, high-rise and low-rise housings. The burglary rate increased only at high-rise housings after the new lock-breaking tools appeared. Global and local Moran's I statistics revealed that the clusters of detached house burglary were most significant and static, while those of high-rise housing displaced dynamically. Other findings are reported and discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]