Michael Kenneth Townsley

Repeat Burglary Victimisation: spatial and temporal patterns

To 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 dot’) 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.

Reducing Violence in Licensed Venues Through Community Safety Action Projects: The Queensland Experience

Community-based safety action projects, replications of the model developed in Surfers Paradise designed to reduce violence and disorder in licensed environments in city entertainment areas, were implemented in three diverse North Queensland cities (Cairns, Townsville and Mackay). The change model is based on prior experience with community interventions, the theory of situational crime prevention, and the theory of responsive regulation. The interventions took place in each city during 1995 and early 1996. The results are based on unobtrusive direct observations by patron-observers of aggression, drinking, and management practices in licensed venues in September 1994 and October 1996. There was a decline of 56% in all aggressive and violent incidents, and a decline of at least 75% in physical assaults, but conclusions concerning direct causality cannot be drawn. These declines, which did not differ significantly between cities, coincided with marked improvements in host responsibility practices and a decline in male drunkenness.

Use of Data Mining Techniques to Model Crime Scene Investigator Performance

This paper examines how data mining techniques can assist the monitoring of Crime Scene Investigator performance. The findings show that Investigators can be placed in one of four groups according to their ability to recover DNA and fingerprints from crime scenes. They also show that their ability to predict which crime scenes will yield the best opportunity of recovering forensic samples has no correlation to their actual ability to recover those samples.

Burglar Target Selection: A Cross-national Comparison

Objectives: This study builds on research undertaken by Bernasco and Nieuwbeerta and explores the generalizability of a theoretically derived offender target selection model in three cross-national study regions. Methods: Taking a discrete spatial choice approach, we estimate the impact of both environment- and offender-level factors on residential burglary placement in the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Combining cleared burglary data from all study regions in a single statistical model, we make statistical comparisons between environments. Results: In all three study regions, the likelihood an offender selects an area for burglary is positively influenced by proximity to their home, the proportion of easily accessible targets, and the total number of targets available. Furthermore, in two of the three study regions, juvenile offenders under the legal driving age are significantly more influenced by target proximity than adult offenders. Post hoc tests indicate the magnitudes of these impacts vary significantly between study regions. Conclusions: While burglary target selection strategies are consistent with opportunity-based explanations of offending, the impact of environmental context is significant. As such, the approach undertaken in combining observations from multiple study regions may aid criminology scholars in assessing the generalizability of observed findings across multiple environments.

Determining how journeys-to-crime vary: Measuring inter- and intra-offender crime trip distributions

Journey to crime studies have attempted to illuminate aspects of offender decision making that has implications for theory and practice. This article argues that our current understanding of journey to crime is incomplete. It improves our understanding by resolving a fundamental unit of analysis issue that had thus far not received much attention in the literature. It is demonstrated that the aggregate distribution of crime trips (commonly known as the distance decay) does not take into account the considerable variation that exists between individual offenders’ crime trip distributions. Moreover, the common assumption of statistical independence between observations that make up a distribution is something that, until now, has yet to be tested for distributions of crime trips of multiple offenders. In order to explore these issues, three years of burglary data from a UK police force were linked to 32 prolific offenders to generate journey to crime distributions at the aggregate and offender levels. Using multi-level models, it was demonstrated that the bulk (65%) of the variation of journeys to crime exists at the offender level, indicating that individual crime trips are not statistically independent. In addition the distance decay pattern found at the aggregate level was not, in the main, observed at the offender level – a result that runs counter to conventional wisdom, and another example of the ecological fallacy. The implications of these findings are discussed.

(Looking) Back to the Future: using space-time patterns to better predict the location of street crime

Crime analysts attempt to identify regularities in police recorded crime data with a central view of disrupting the patterns found. One common method for doing so is hotspot mapping, focusing attention on spatial clustering as a route to crime reduction (Chainey & Ratcliffe, 2005; Clarke & Eck, 2003). Despite the widespread use of this analytical technique, evaluation tools to assess its ability to accurately predict spatial patterns have only recently become available to practitioners (Chainey, Tompson, & Uhlig, 2008). Crucially, none has examined this issue from a spatio-temporal standpoint. Given that the organisational nature of policing agencies is shift based, it is common-sensical to understand crime problems at this temporal sensitivity, so there is an opportunity for resources to be deployed swiftly in a manner that optimises prevention and detection. This paper tests whether hotspot forecasts can be enhanced when time-of-day information is incorporated into the analysis. Using street crime data, and employing an evaluative tool called the Predictive Accuracy Index (PAI), we found that the predictive accuracy can be enhanced for particular temporal shifts, and this is primarily influenced by the degree of spatial clustering present. Interestingly, when hotspots shrank (in comparison with the all-day hotspots), they became more concentrated, and subsequently more predictable. This is meaningful in practice; for if crime is more predictable during specific time-frames, then response resources can be used intelligently to reduce victimisation.

Emergent Regularities of Interpersonal Victimization: An Agent-Based Investigation

Objectives: Apply computational agent-based modeling to explore the generative sufficiency of several mechanisms derived from the field of environmental criminology in explaining commonly observed patterns of interpersonal victimization. Method: Controlled simulation experiments compared patterns of simulated interpersonal victimization to three empirically derived regularities of crime using established statistical techniques: (1) spatial clustering (nearest neighbor index), (2) repeat victimization (Gini coefficient), and (3) journeys to crime (Pearson’s coefficient of skewness). Results: Large, statistically significant increases in spatial clustering, repeat victimization, and journey to crime skewness are observed when virtual offenders operate according to mechanisms proposed by the routine activity approach, rational choice perspective, and geometry/pattern theories of crime. Conclusion: This research provides support for several propositions of environmental criminology in explaining why interpersonal victimization tends to be spatially concentrated, experienced by a small number of repeat victims, and why aggregate journey to crime curves tend to follow a distance decay relationship. By extending previous work in agent-based modeling of property victimization, it also demonstrates that the same core mechanisms are sufficient to generate plausible patterns of crime when examining fundamentally different types of offending.

Cues of upper body strength account for most of the variance in men's bodily attractiveness

Evolution equips sexually reproducing species with mate choice mechanisms that function to evaluate the reproductive consequences of mating with different individuals. Indeed, evolutionary psychologists have shown that womens mate choice mechanisms track many cues of mens genetic quality and ability to invest resources in the woman and her offspring. One variable that predicted both a mans genetic quality and his ability to invest is the mans formidability (i.e. fighting ability or resource holding power/potential). Modern women, therefore, should have mate choice mechanisms that respond to ancestral cues of a mans fighting ability. One crucial component of a mans ability to fight is his upper body strength. Here, we test how important physical strength is to mens bodily attractiveness. Three sets of photographs of mens bodies were shown to raters who estimated either their physical strength or their attractiveness. Estimates of physical strength determined over 70% of mens bodily attractiveness. Additional analyses showed that tallness and leanness were also favoured, and, along with estimates of physical strength, accounted for 80% of mens bodily attractiveness. Contrary to popular theories of mens physical attractiveness, there was no evidence of a nonlinear effect; the strongest men were the most attractive in all samples.

Trouble in paradise: the crime and health outcomes of the Surfers Paradise licensed venue lockout

INTRODUCTION AND AIMS The lockout intervention has become embedded in Australian alcohol policy with little scientific evidence of its effectiveness in reducing violence and disorder. This paper reports an evaluation of the Queensland lockout pilot in Surfers Paradise. Patrons could not enter or re-enter licensed venues after 3 am, while patrons inside at this time could stay until close. DESIGN AND METHODS Using police and ambulance data, time series analyses examined the impact of tourism seasons and the lockout on rates of crime, violence, injury and intoxication. Additional analyses were also conducted to show spatial and temporal changes in crime over time. RESULTS Both police and ambulance data showed that the lockout introduction had no statistically significant impact on rates of crime, violence, head and neck injuries, and intoxication over the 2 years following lockout. Hot spot maps indicated limited spatial shift of crime within Surfers Paradise following the lockout introduction, with evidence of a temporary intensification of crime in already established hot spots. We found a moderate statistically significant change in the 24 h distribution of crime after the lockout implementation, suggesting temporal displacement of crime. DISCUSSION Results support the small existing body of evidence on lockouts that indicates they are largely ineffective in reducing crime and injuries in entertainment districts. CONCLUSION As multi-pronged strategies that include a lockout gain in popularity, further investigation should focus on identifying the key drivers of successful interventions such as the Newcastle strategy, to better refine these interventions for replication and evaluation elsewhere. [De Andrade D, Homel R, Townsley M. Trouble in paradise: The crime and health outcomes of the Surfers Paradise licensed venue lockout. Drug Alcohol Rev 2016;35:564-572].

Toward the Adaptation of Routine Activity and Lifestyle Exposure Theories to Account for Cyber Abuse Victimization

With the advent of the Internet and the emergence of cybercrimes (e.g., cyber stalking, cyber harassment), criminologists have begun to explore the empirical utility of lifestyle exposure and routine activity theories (RATs) to account for personal victimization as a consequence of cyber abuse. Available cyber abuse studies have produced inconsistent empirical support for both models, which has reignited the debate about whether terrestrial theories, such as RAT, will ever be able to adequately explain cybercrimes due to the spatial and temporal disconnect between the theories and the cyber environment. This article reviews existing cyber abuse scholarship, explores potential reasons for the weak empirical support for routine activity and lifestyle exposure theories in cyberspace, and proposes several directions for future research. We suggest that to further our understanding of cyber abuse processes, scholars need to carefully define and operationalize the key theoretical concepts in the light of latest developments in RAT (i.e., addition of new controllers—handlers and place managers, and super controllers), and conduct in-depth qualitative studies, as well as quantitative studies, that employ robust methodological designs and multi-level statistical analyses.