Wim Bernasco

Robberies in Chicago: A Block-Level Analysis of the Influence of Crime Generators, Crime Attractors, and Offender Anchor Points

The effects of crime generators, crime attractors, and offender anchor points on the distribution of street robberies across the nearly 25,000 census blocks of Chicago are examined. The analysis includes a wide array of activities and facilities that are expected to attract criminals and generate crime. These include a variety of legal and illegal businesses and infrastructural accessibility facilitators. In addition to these crime attractors and generators, the role of the presence of motivated offenders’ anchor points, as measured by offenders’ residence and gang activity, is assessed. The analysis also includes crime attractors, crime generators, and offender anchor points in adjacent census blocks. The findings demonstrate the strength of the effects of crime generators and attractors and offender anchor points on the frequency of street robbery at the census block level.

Putting crime in its place : Units of analysis in geographic criminology

Putting Crime in its Place: Units of Analysis in Geographic Criminology Edited by David Weisburd, Wim Bernasco and Gerben J.N. Bruinsma Table of Contents Introduction 1-Units of Analysis in Geographic Criminology: Historical Development, Critical Issues and Open Questions David Weisburd, Gerben J.N. Bruinsma, Wim Bernasco Part I What is the Appropriate Level of Investigation of Crime At Place? Theoretical and Methodological Issues in Defining Units of Place 2-Why Small is Better: Advancing the Study of the Role of Behavioral Contexts in Crime Causation Dietrich Oberwittler, Per-Olof H. Wikstrom 3-Where the Action is at Places: Examining Spatio-Temporal Patterns of Juvenile Crime at Places Using Trajectory Analysis and GIS Elizabeth Groff, David Weisburd, Nancy A. Morris 4-Crime Analysis at Multiple Scales of Aggregation: A Topological Approach Patricia L. Brantingham, Paul J. Brantingham, Mona Vajihollahi, Kathryn Wuschke 5-Geographical Units of Analysis and the Analysis of Crime George F. Rengert, Brian Lockwood 6-Waves, Particles and Crime Michael D. Maltz Part II Empirical Examples of Crime Place Studies: What Can We Learn? 7-Crime, Neighborhoods and Units of Analysis: Putting Space in its Place George E. Tita, Robert T. Greenbaum 8-Predictive Mapping of Crime by ProMap: Accuracy, Units of Analysis and the Environmental Backcloth Shane D. Johnson, Kate J. Bowers, Daniel J. Birks, Ken Pease 9-Urban Streets as MicroContexts to Commit Violence Johan van Wilsem 10-Determining How Journeys-To-Crime Vary: Measuring Inter- and Intra-Offender Crime Trip Distributions William Smith, John W. Bond, Michael Townsley

Putting Crime in its Place

Putting Crime in its Place: Units of Analysis in Geographic Criminology Edited by David Weisburd, Wim Bernasco and Gerben J.N. Bruinsma Table of Contents Introduction 1-Units of Analysis in Geographic Criminology: Historical Development, Critical Issues and Open Questions David Weisburd, Gerben J.N. Bruinsma, Wim Bernasco Part I What is the Appropriate Level of Investigation of Crime At Place? Theoretical and Methodological Issues in Defining Units of Place 2-Why Small is Better: Advancing the Study of the Role of Behavioral Contexts in Crime Causation Dietrich Oberwittler, Per-Olof H. Wikstrom 3-Where the Action is at Places: Examining Spatio-Temporal Patterns of Juvenile Crime at Places Using Trajectory Analysis and GIS Elizabeth Groff, David Weisburd, Nancy A. Morris 4-Crime Analysis at Multiple Scales of Aggregation: A Topological Approach Patricia L. Brantingham, Paul J. Brantingham, Mona Vajihollahi, Kathryn Wuschke 5-Geographical Units of Analysis and the Analysis of Crime George F. Rengert, Brian Lockwood 6-Waves, Particles and Crime Michael D. Maltz Part II Empirical Examples of Crime Place Studies: What Can We Learn? 7-Crime, Neighborhoods and Units of Analysis: Putting Space in its Place George E. Tita, Robert T. Greenbaum 8-Predictive Mapping of Crime by ProMap: Accuracy, Units of Analysis and the Environmental Backcloth Shane D. Johnson, Kate J. Bowers, Daniel J. Birks, Ken Pease 9-Urban Streets as MicroContexts to Commit Violence Johan van Wilsem 10-Determining How Journeys-To-Crime Vary: Measuring Inter- and Intra-Offender Crime Trip Distributions William Smith, John W. Bond, Michael Townsley

Them Again? Same-Offender Involvement in Repeat and Near Repeat Burglaries

Burglary victimization is associated with a temporary elevated risk of future victimization for the same property and nearby properties. Previous research suggests that often the initial and subsequent burglaries involve the same offenders. This paper tests this assertion, using data on detected residential burglaries during the period 1996‐2004 in The Hague and its environs, in the Netherlands. It demonstrates that pairs of detected burglaries occurring in close proximity in space and time are much more likely to involve the same offenders than pairs that are not so related. Topics for future research and implications for the detection of burglaries are addressed.

Units of analysis in geographic criminologY: Historical development, critical issues, and open questions

Social scientists have had a long and enduring interest in the geography of crime and the explanation of variation of crime at place. In this introductory chapter, we first describe the history of crime and place studies, showing that in the course of two centuries, scholars have increasingly focused their interest on smaller spatial units of analysis. In the 19th century, they typically studied large administrative districts such as regions and countries. The Chicago School focused on much smaller urban communities. More recently, interest has moved toward geographic units as small as street blocks or addresses. After this historical account, we address specific questions regarding how the unit of analysis should be chosen for crime and place studies. We address substantive theoretical, statistical, and practical problems that are raised in choosing appropriate levels of geography for research and practice. We discuss issues of theory and data and consider the factors that have inhibited the study of units of analysis of crime at place to date, mentioning the specific contributions to the unit of analysis problem that are made by the chapters that follow.

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.

When Is Spending Time With Peers Related to Delinquency? The Importance of Where, What, and With Whom

Research has shown that time spent with peers is related to delinquency, but little is known about the conditions under which spending time with peers is most related to delinquent behavior. In this study, we contrast different categories of time spent with peers, using detailed information about the activities and whereabouts of 843 adolescents in The Hague, the Netherlands. Our findings reveal substantial differences. Time spent with peers appears to be independently related with delinquency only when it combines at least two of the following risk-inducing conditions: just socializing, being in public, and being unsupervised.

Moral emotions and offending: Do feelings of anticipated shame and guilt mediate the effect of socialization on offending?

In this study we examine whether feelings of anticipated shame and anticipated guilt when being caught for an offence mediate the relationship between parental monitoring, bonds with parents and school, deviant peers, moral values and offending. We use data from the SPAN project, a study that collected detailed information about offending, moral emotions and socialization among 843 adolescents in The Hague, the Netherlands. The results show that moral emotions of both anticipated shame and guilt have a strong direct effect on offending. The results also show that the relationship between parental monitoring, deviant peers, moral values and offending is substantially mediated by anticipated shame and guilt. This study clearly suggests that both shame and guilt need to be included in the explanation of offending.

Perceived sanction risk, individual propensity and adolescent offending: Assessing key findings from the deterrence literature in a Dutch sample

Deterrence studies have shown that perceived sanction risk is related to delinquent behaviour, independent of other variables, and that this relation may be conditioned by individual propensity towards crime. The principal goal of this study is to assess these findings with data from a sample of 843 Dutch adolescents. First, we analysed whether perceived sanction risk (perceived apprehension risk and perceived consequences if one is caught offending) has a relationship with offending, independent of one’s morality and self-control. Second, we examined possible interactions between perceived sanction risk and self-control, and between perceived sanction risk and morality. We also explored associations between specific offences (burglary, vandalism and assault), offence-specific measures of low morality (how right or wrong are burglary, vandalism and assault) and specific measures of perceived sanction risks. The findings demonstrate that perceived sanction risk is related to lower offending and that self-control is related to less offending, whereas low levels of morality are related to higher levels of offending. When offence-specific measures are used, the relation between perceived sanctions and offending seems to be dependent on one’s level of morality. Our results suggest that the less a person morally supports specific types of offending, the more strongly that person is affected by perceived sanctions. The implications of these findings for future studies of deterrence are discussed.

Statistical Analysis of Spatial Crime Data

While the geography of crime has been a focal concern in criminology from the very start of the discipline, the development and use of statistical methods specifically designed for spatially referenced data has evolved more recently. This chapter gives an overview of the application of such methods in research on crime and criminal justice, and provides references to the general literature on geospatial statistics, and to instructive and innovative applications in the crime and criminal justice literature.The chapter consists of three sections. The first section introduces the subject matter and delineates it from descriptive spatial statistics and from visualization techniques (“crime mapping.”) It discusses the relevance of spatial analysis, the nature of spatial data, and the issues of sampling and choosing a spatial unit of analysis. The second section deals with the analysis of spatial distributions. We discuss the specification of spatial structure, address spatial autocorrelation, and review a variety of spatially informed regression models and their applications. The third section addresses the analysis of movement, including spatial interaction models, spatial choice models, and the analysis of mobility triads, in the field of crime and criminal justice.