George F. Rengert

BURGLAR ALARMS AND THE CHOICE BEHAVIOR OF BURGLARS: A SUBURBAN PHENOMENON

Abstract Employing observation and deduction, the present study addressed the question of why some homes in a community are more likely targets for burglary. The period of observation spanned two-and-a-half years, in three Philadelphia suburbs. The townships differ in population density, distance from the city, and affluence. The deduced burglary model entails four decision points for the burglar: choice of neighborhood, choice of street, choice of property, and choice of point of entry. The neighborhood is chosen for its proximity to thoroughfares that are familiar to the burglar. Cul de sacs abutted by a wooded area or an abandoned railroad right-of-way, which offer opportunities for concealment, were targeted more frequently than other streets by burglars. Homes with high value and few target hardening attributes were more likely targets than other homes. Most burglars entered the targeted home through a first floor doorway. All other things equal, the presence of an alarm reduces the victimization rate. The alarm reduces the victimization rate to a greater degree as home value increases.

Geographical Units of Analysis and the Analysis of Crime

When spatial analysis of crime is conducted, the analyst should not ignore the spatial units that data are aggregated into and the impact of this choice on the interpretation of findings. Just as several independent variables are considered to determine whether they have statistical significance, a consideration of multiple spatial units of analysis should be made as well, in order to determine whether the choice of aggregation level used in a spatial analysis can result in biased findings. This chapter considers four classes of problems that can arise when data bounded in space are analyzed. These problems, inherent in most studies of space, include: issues associated with politically bounded units of aggregation, edge effects of bounded space, the modifiable aerial unit problem (MAUP), and ways in which the results of statistical analyses can be manipulated by changes in the level of aggregation. Techniques that can be used to alleviate each of the methodological difficulties described in this chapter are then discussed.

Where Size Matters: Agglomeration Economies of Illegal Drug Markets in Philadelphia

There is a debate over whether police attention focused on an illegal drug market causes dealers to spatially displace their activities “around the corner” therefore having no positive impact on the aggregate level of illegal drug sales in the city. The alternative perspective is that focused police attention lowers the rate of illegal drug sales in the city. Recent research in Jersey City, New Jersey has demonstrated that focused police attention does not simply move illegal drug dealing around the corner. The present analysis explains why this finding is likely to be common in other cities using the economic theory of “agglomeration economies.” Agglomeration economies illustrate that taking the largest and most profitable site from illegal drug dealers will make dealing in the surrounding neighborhoods less rather than more profitable and lead to a smaller marketplace overall. The empirical analysis focuses on Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Spatial justice and criminal victimization

Spatial variation in crime rates generally has been attributed to differences in culture, economic status, and the social organization of communities. Rarely have policies and practices of criminal justice professionals been examined as causes of this variation. If these policies and practices do place citizens at a higher risk of victimization, a sense of fairness requires that all communities in a region share equally in this increase. This article examines the spatial justice resulting from sentencing practices in Pennsylvania. It demonstrates that certain locations in Philadelphia bear an unequal burden because of these practices. The relatively high crime rates of these areas are due partly to decisions made by criminal justice professionals.

Estimation of net benefits of residential electronic security

Home surveys and ethnographic studies have demonstrated that alarms are effective in deterring intruders. Local police departments across North America, however, face significant difficulties in responding to ever-increasing false activations and in managing alarm registrations. Local, county, and state governments must know whether alarms create a net benefit or a net burden to society as a whole. In this paper, all social costs and benefits are computed, and a positive annualized social net benefit is realized. Benefits include avoidance of property losses and personal injuries from both burglary and fire. Costs include installation and utility charges for systems and police response. The results of the analysis provide public policy suggestions for police involvement in alarm activities and for effective alarm-related ordinances.

Theories of Crime and Place

In the previous chapter, we showed that crime is concentrated at very small geographic units, substantially smaller than neighborhoods, and that these concentrations, on average, are relatively stable. This is true whether examining high- or low-crime neighborhoods. Although high-crime places do cluster, they seldom form a homogeneous block of high-crime places. Rather, interspersed within concentrations of high-crime places are many low- and modest-crime places. Why is crime concentrated in a relatively small number of places? Standard criminology has not asked this question, largely because standard criminology focuses on criminality and implicitly assumes that the density of offenders explains crime density. Recognition that place characteristics matter is the starting point for this chapter. We look at two perspectives on crime place characteristics. We use the term “perspective” because each type of explanation is comprised of multiple theories linked by a common orientation. The first perspective arises from opportunity theories of crime. The second perspective arises from social disorganization theories of crime. We begin by contrasting two ways of thinking about how a place becomes a crime hot spot and suggest that the process by which high-crime places evolve must involve place characteristics. In the next sections, we examine opportunity and social disorganization explanations. In the final section of the chapter, we examine possible ways researchers might link these two perspectives. PROCESSES THAT CREATE CRIME PLACES Before we look for explanations of why places become hot spots of crime it is important to consider two processes that might lead to such an outcome. Criminologists have generally proposed two generic models to account for the processes that lead to variation in place susceptibility to crime. One model suggests that places may start with reasonably similar risks of an initial criminal attack, but once attacked the risk of a subsequent attack on the place rises. Over time, places diverge in their crime risk, and consequently in their crime counts. This temporal contagion model is also known as a boost model (see Chapter 2) or a state-dependence model. It puts the emphasis on offenders’ willingness to return to a previously successful crime site (Johnson et al. 2007; Townsley et al. 2000). It suggests that irrespective of initial crime risk the occurrence of a crime will lead to changes in risk of crime at a place.

Crime Places within Criminological Thought

A new perspective in criminology has emerged over the last three decades, a perspective with considerable potential to add to our understanding and control of crime. In the same way the invention of the microscope opened up a biological world scientists had not previously seen, this new perspective opens the world of small geographic features we had overlooked. Research has demonstrated that actions at these microplaces have strong connections to crime. Just as the microscope paved the way to new treatments and advances in public health, this new perspective in criminology is yielding improved ways of reducing crime. This new perspective shifts our attention from large geographic units, such as neighborhoods, to small units, such as street segments and addresses. This shift in the “units of analysis” transforms our understanding of the crime problem and what we can do about it. There are two aspects to this shift in units. The first shifts our attention from large geographic units to small ones. This we have just mentioned. The second shifts our attention from people to events, from those who commit crimes to the crimes themselves. Criminology has been primarily focused on people (Brantingham and Brantingham 1990; Weisburd 2002). Frank Cullen (2011) noted in his Sutherland Address to the American Society of Criminology in 2010 that the focus of criminology has been even more specific. He argued that criminology was dominated by a paradigm, which he termed “adolescence-limited criminology,” that had focused primarily on adolescents. To what extent have person-based studies dominated criminology? Weisburd (2015a) examined units of analysis in all empirical articles published in Criminology between 1990 and 2014. Criminology is the highest-impact journal in the field and the main scientific publication of the largest criminological society in the world, the American Society of Criminology. He identified 719 research articles. Of the 719 articles, two-thirds focused on people as units of analysis. The next main units of study were situations (15 percent) and macrogeographic areas such as cities and states (11 percent). Eck and Eck (2012) examined the 148 research papers published in Criminology and Public Policy from its first issue in 2001 until the end of 2010, and the 230 articles published in Criminal Justice Policy Review during the same time period.

Burglary in a Segregated City: Race of Offenders and Community of Offending

Marcus Felson’s intellectual mind is much like a shotgun blast. The pellets are all aimed in a general direction, most of them are on target and a few are dead-on in hitting the bull’s eye. The most important of those that hit their mark are his development of Routine Activities Theory (Cohen&Felson, 1979) and his integration of this theory with that of the reasoning criminal (Clarke&Felson, 1993). Routine Activity Theory postulates that a crime will take place when a motivated offender encounters a suitable target in the absence of a capable guardian (Cohen&Felson, 1979). In this chapter, we focus on the second and third component of this theory, a suitable target and capable guardians. We examine the patterns of crime committed by residential burglars in Philadelphia, who differ by race. We are concerned with whether a suitable target and guardianship are the same or different depending on the race of the offender and the dominate race of the community within which the offence occurs (Reiss, 1981).

The relationship between social distance and treatment attrition for juvenile offenders

ABSTRACT: Although recent work has begun to identify factors associated with risk of treatment attrition for juvenile offenders, few of these studies have considered how community context is related to the completion of juvenile offender treatment. The current work examines the relationship between social distance and treatment attrition for juvenile offenders. Analyzing a data set of 5,517 juvenile offenders adjudicated in Philadelphia, the results of cross-classified hierarchical models indicate that social distance, operationalized in two ways that consider perceptions of both the ethnic composition and level of disadvantage within neighborhoods, does not directly predict the likelihood of treatment attrition. However, when considered with the ethnicity of the juvenile offenders in the form of an interaction effect, social distance based on perceptions of ethnicity within neighborhoods is shown to predict the likelihood of treatment attrition, and to be more acute for young non-White offenders. The implications of these findings are discussed.