Repeat Burglary Victimisation: Spatial and Temporal Patterns

Abstract

T o date there has been little Australian research on repeat victimisation. This is a study of repeat burglary in an area of Brisbane using police calls for service data. We demonstrate: (a) the prevalence of residential repeat victim addresses ('hot dots') is of a similar magnitude to that found in studies in the United Kingdom; (b) the time distributions of revictimisation are identical with those found in studies in the UK and elsewhere; (c) 'hot spots' (small areas with high crime density) can be identified by statistical analyses of spatial concentrations of incidents; (d) unstable hot spots tend to be temporary aggregations of hot dots, whereas stable hot spots seem to reflect more the social and physical characteristics of certain localities; and (e) the overall incidence of burglary could be reduced by at least 25 per cent if all repeat victimisation could be eliminated. There are a number of areas where concepts and techniques for repeat victim research could potentially be strengthened: (a) clarifying the connections between hot dots and hot spots, particularly through exploration of the concept of a 'near repeat address'; (b) applying survival analysis to the data on the time periods between victimisations; and (c) using moving average techniques to examine changes in the spatial distributions of burglary over time.Burglary has been a growing problem, both in Queensland and in Australia as a whole, for the past 20 years, although police statistics and crime victim surveys indicate that the Queensland rate is close to the national average (Criminal Justice Commission, 1996). However, there are indications that the rate may have peaked, with recent marked declines in the burglary rate in Queensland (Queensland Police

Evaluating the Impact the Weekday Has on Near-Repeat Victimization: A Spatio-Temporal Analysis of Street Robberies in the City of Vienna, Austria

“…Temporal information is collected in the form of the start and end date and time of the crime incident, and the date and time of reporting to the police officer. Townsley et al [3] state that research on repeat victimization is only reliable if addresses are recorded and geocoded accurately, and if the time window of the start and end date (and time) is not too large. A large time window may arise if a victim does not know the exact time of victimization.…”

“…More recently, such spatial patterns have been observed for various crime types, for instance, for residential burglaries [3], car thefts [4], or robberies [5]. In recent years few studies have been conducted considering both the spatial and the temporal component of crime events (e.g., [6,7]).…”

Repeat burglary victimization in Malawi and the influence of housing type and area-level affluence

“…The British Crime Survey estimates that around 40 per cent of domestic burglaries are repeat offences ( Budd, 1999 ). Using police recorded crime data the proportion of repeat offences is reported to range from 13 per cent in Merseyside, England ( Johnson et al , 1997 ) to 32 per cent in Beenleigh, Australia ( Townsley et al , 2000 ).…”

Analysis of Burglary Hot Spots and Near-Repeat Victimization in a Large Chinese City

“…The rhythm, characterizing crime, provides critical information about criminal activity. More recently, space-time patterns have also been observed among different crime types such as residential burglaries [2], street robberies [3], and gun violence [4]. However, few studies have considered the space-time pattern around hot spots.…”