Traveling Alone or Together? Neighborhood Context on Individual and Group Juvenile and Adult Burglary Decisions

Abstract

Neighborhood characteristics are important considerations when offenders make targeting decisions. Movement patterns among adults and juveniles vary widely, which impacts both the number of crime opportunities and the range of neighborhoods to which an offender is exposed. We test whether offending patterns among adult and juvenile burglars vary based on distances traveled, the types of neighborhoods targeted, and whether suspects acted alone or in a group. Using discrete choice modeling, we draw upon a unique sample of cleared burglaries in a representative city in the south over a 13-year period. Results show that adult burglars consistently travel further and are more sensitive to neighborhood conditions than their juvenile counterparts, but that group participation makes little difference in target decisions.

Effects of physical stock loss on the financial performance of retail enterprises

“…Burglary can be defined in the broader context of retail crime (Van Der Walt, Jonck & Lange 2016). Burglary refers to criminality and/or disorderly behaviour committed by or against businesses and might be targeted against employees, a single business owner, or part of a broader pattern of crime which unfavourably impacts a number of businesses in the same zone, or in the same geographic area (Chamberlain, Boggess & Fisher 2022). In this section, burglary is discussed as a form of retail crime that contributes to stock shrinkage and deprives retailers of maximum profits and sales.…”

Locating offenders: Introducing the reverse spatial patterning approach

“…Adults may also travel slightly further distances from home to engage in crime relative to juveniles, but whether they offend alone or as part of a group has a negligible effect on distance (Chamberlain, Boggess, and Fisher 2022). This also suggests that crimes attributed to a single offender or group of offenders will spatially cluster (i.e., the basis for geographic profiling) and that a concentration of crime events potentially signals the locations of nearby offenders.…”