Modelling the Influence of Societal Factors on Municipal Theft Rates in Sweden: Methodological Concerns and Substantive Findings

Abstract

This study investigates the possibilities of using a non-linear longitudinal model when analysing the influence of crime opportunity and commission propensity factors on societies' theft rates. The model used, which is based on decision-theoretical assumptions on individual criminal behaviour, explains how the theft rate is influenced by contemporary and historical societal characteristics. The crime opportunities in a municipality are assumed to be strongly affected by the density of the population, and the inhabitants' commission propensities by their social bonds. The model is tested with register data for Swedish municipalities from the period 1970-90, with the change in the community theft rate as the dependent variable. The results show that the model used has significant explanatory power, much better than a corresponding linear model. Consonant with the assumptions made, it was found that the theft rate is higher the denser the population and the weaker the social bonds, that there are strong interactions between various contributing factors, and that there are temporal trends for relationships between the theft rate and social bonds characteristics at different points in time that have interesting causal interpretations.