Stijn Ruiter

Situational causes of offending: a fixed-effects analysis of space-time budget data

Situational theories of crime assert that the situations that people participate in contain the proximal causes of crime. Prior research has not tested situational hypotheses rigorously, either for lack of detailed situational data or for lack of analytical rigor. The present research combines detailed situational data with analytical methods that eliminate all stable between-individual factors as potential confounds. We test seven potential situational causes: 1) presence of peers, 2) absence of adult handlers, 3) public space, 4) unstructured activities, 5) use of alcohol, 6) use of cannabis, and 7) carrying weapons. In a two-wave panel study, a general sample of adolescents completed a space-time budget interview that recorded, hour by hour over the course of 4 complete days, the activities and whereabouts of the subjects, including any self-reported offenses. In total, 76 individuals reported having committed 104 offenses during the 4 days covered in the space-time budget interview. Using data on the 4,949 hours that these 76 offenders spent awake during these 4 days, within-individual, fixed-effects multivariate logit analyses were used to establish situational causes of offending. The findings demonstrate that offending is strongly and positively related to all hypothesized situational causes except using cannabis and carrying weapons.

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.

National Religious Context and Volunteering: More Rigorous Tests Supporting the Association

When testing hypotheses, it is important to carefully scrutinize the data for the possibility of influential cases, especially in analyses with relatively low numbers of cases, as in most cross-national multilevel studies. We therefore welcome the methodological contribution of Van der Meer, Te Grotenhuis, and Pelzer (2010) on influential cases in multilevel models. To illustrate the usefulness of their graphic and numeric tools, they use our article ‘‘National Context, Religiosity, and Volunteering: Results from 53 Countries’’ (Ruiter and De Graaf 2006) as an illustrative case. In our original study, we checked whether our results suffered from influential cases by re-estimating our models 96 times, excluding a single case (i.e., a countrywave combination) each time. This did not lead to substantially different conclusions; consequently, we presented our results based on the full sample. Van der Meer and colleagues claim that we should have excluded not just a single case, or even two cases, but instead a cluster of cases. For this purpose, Van der Meer and colleagues develop a very useful tool that we recommend for all scholars working with multilevel models. We have several comments on Van der Meer and colleagues’ argument, which mainly focuses on a cluster of influential cases that boost the original positive association between the national religious context and volunteering. Our reply is threefold. First, we argue that based on standard rules, one could also choose to delete influential cases that dampen the original association. Second, and more importantly, after a more rigorous and less arbitrary method for dropping cases—by simultaneously deleting all influential cases on the country-wave level and not just the three Van der Meer and colleagues focus on—we are able to confirm our earlier conclusion about the positive association between religious context and volunteering. Third, we are aware of the importance of replications and stated so in our original article: ‘‘since the number of countries participating in the World Values Surveys increases with every wave, we hope that future research can provide stronger tests for non-Christian countries as well’’ (Ruiter and De Graaf 2006:207–208). The methodology in this response provides this stronger test and gives us even more confidence that our original hypothesis is supported.

Bringing the Beneficiary Closer: Explanations for Volunteering Time in Dutch Private Development Initiatives

In the Netherlands, charitable behavior for international development purposes is subject to important changes. Whereas established development organizations suffer from a declining support base, private development initiatives (PDIs) that execute concrete, small-scale projects within direct personalized aid networks can count on increasing enthusiasm from individual donors of money and time. We investigate to what extent cost-benefit evaluations of volunteers (supply side) and characteristics of PDIs (demand side) affect the time allocation for volunteering in these organizations. The study is based on a survey among 661 volunteers active in Dutch PDIs. PDI volunteers face time and budget restrictions, partly due to their position on the (paid) labor market. Volunteers who are skeptical toward established development organizations increase voluntary time investment in PDIs. Corroborating the proximity hypothesis, volunteers perceiving a smaller distance to beneficiaries, spend more volunteering hours in PDIs. Volunteers also spend more hours volunteering for PDIs with larger budgets and more staff.

Do Street Robbery Location Choices Vary Over Time of Day or Day of Week? A Test in Chicago

Objectives: This article examines the hypothesis that in street robbery location choices, the importance of location attributes is conditional on the time of day and on the day of the week. Method: The hypothesis is assessed by estimating and comparing separate discrete location choice models for each two-hour time block of the day and for each day of the week. The spatial units of analysis are census blocks. Their relevant attributes include presence of various legal and illegal cash economies, presence of high schools, measures of accessibility, and distance from the offender’s home. Results: The hypothesis is strongly rejected because for almost all census block attributes, their importance hardly depends on time of day or day of week. Only the effect of high schools in census blocks follows expectations, as its effect is only demonstrated at the times and on the days that schools are open. Conclusions: The results suggest that street robbers’ location choices are not as strongly driven by spatial variations in immediate opportunities as has been suggested in previous studies. Rather, street robbers seem to perpetrate in the environs of cash economies and transit hubs most of the time irrespective of how many potential victims are around.

Family Matters: Effects of Family Members’ Residential Areas on Crime Location Choice

According to crime pattern theory, offenders are likely to select crime locations within their awareness space. Previous studies have shown that offenders often commit crimes within their current and former residential areas and in areas they previously targeted. However, offenders’ awareness spaces obviously consist of more locations that potentially influence their crime location choices. This study examines the importance of the residential areas of offenders’ family members. Most offenders visit their families at least occasionally and consequently get familiar with the areas in which their families live. It is hypothesized that family members’ residential areas are at increased risk of being targeted. Unique data were used to reconstruct residential histories of the parents, siblings, and children of 7,910 offenders who committed 19,420 offenses. The results of discrete spatial choice models showed that residential areas of family members are indeed at increased risk of being targeted. Current familial residential areas had stronger and more consistent effects than had former familial residential areas. Effects were strongest for the residential areas of offenders’ children compared with those of their parents and siblings. The residential areas of male and female family members affected the crime location choices of male and female offenders equally.

Like two peas in a pod? Explaining friendship selection processes related to victimization and offending

In this paper, we examine the similarity between friends with respect to experiences with crime among a sample of Dutch individuals. We investigate the extent to which offenders, victims and victim-offenders (de)select friends differently and, subsequently, who (de)selects whom and why. We use data from the annual Dutch panel survey CrimeNL, which includes ego-centered network measures at each wave for more than 500 participants, ranging from 16 to 45 years old. Results show that offenders terminate friendships more often than non-offenders, and they have a higher likelihood of selecting new friends, regardless of prior victimization experiences. Furthermore, homophily with respect to crime involvement exists; both offenders and victims are more likely to select new friends who are similarly involved in crime. Risky lifestyles to a large extent explain why people select offenders as friends, whereas third parties (that is, parents and the pre-existing network of individuals) influence people’s decision to engage in friendships with victims of crime. Nevertheless, after taking individual preferences, meeting opportunities and third parties into account, offenders and victims are still more likely to select friends with similar crime experiences.

How friends’ involvement in crime affects the risk of offending and victimization

This article examines how friends’ involvement in crime influences such involvement in those around them, as offenders or victims, and the extent to which such friendship effects vary with contact frequency, friendship intimacy, and geographical proximity. To test our hypotheses we used four waves from the Dutch panel survey CrimeNL, which includes ego-centered network measures in each wave for respondents aged between 16 and 45. To test our hypotheses, fixed-effects panel models were employed. The results show that living in close proximity to delinquent friends increases people’s own risk of offending, and daily interaction with these friends decreases the risk of victimization. Victimization is also communicated among friends in their daily interactions. These findings stress the need to consider factors that condition how friendships exert influence on the risk of crime involvement.

Dader, slachtoffer, of beiden? De samenhang tussen daderschap en slachtofferschap onderzocht

In dit onderzoek wordt naast de vraag in hoeverre verdachten van misdrijven zelf slachtoffer worden, voor het eerst voor Nederland ook onderzocht in welke mate slachtoffers later zelf verdacht worden van het plegen van delicten. We beschrijven tevens in hoeverre de wederkerige relatie verklaard kan worden door sociaal-demografische kenmerken van individuen. Gegevens uit grootschalige slachtofferenquetes gekoppeld aan verdachtenregistraties van de politie laten een positieve wederkerige samenhang zien, die standhoudt na controle voor sociaal-demografische kenmerken van individuen. Subgroepen die relatief laag scoren op daderschap en slachtofferschap laten een sterkere wederkerige samenhang zien, terwijl voor subgroepen met relatief hoge scores de samenhang minder sterk en soms zelfs negatief is. English abstract: This study addresses next to the question to what extent offenders become victims themselves also and for the first time in the Netherlands the degree in which victims become suspects of criminal investigations themselves. Furthermore, this study also examines whether this reciprocal relationship is in fact spurious, caused by socio-demographic characteristics of individuals. Annual victimization survey data combined with longitudinal police data show a positive reciprocal relationship, even after controlling for socio-demographic characteristics of individuals. Subgroups that score relatively low on offending and victimization show a stronger reciprocal relationship, while for subgroups with relatively high scores, the relationship is less strong or even negative.

Xenofobie onder jongeren: de invloed van interetnisch contact

This study examines xenophobic attitudes of high school pupils. It answers the questions: To what extent do high school pupils from different ethnic backgrounds hold xenophobic attitudes? And to what are these attitudes related with interethnic contact? Scientific progress is made in three ways. Firstly, attitudes of high school pupils from both the ethnic majority (Dutch) and the ethnic minority groups (Turks, Moroccans, and Caribbean) are examined. Secondly, the impact of positive as well as negative interethnic contact within and outside the school environment is determined. And thirdly, hypotheses about interethnic contact are tested while simultaneously controlling for alternative mechanisms that explain xenophobic attitudes. The results show that most pupils have a low level of xenophobia. In addition, the level of xenophobia is less when pupils evaluate their interethnic contacts both within and outside the school environment as positive and higher when they perceive these contacts as negative. However, the impact of positive interethnic contact in class disappears or even reverses when multiculturalism is stressed more during lessons.