Criminal target choice has been described as a multistage process: An offender first selects a suitable area from a set of alternatives and then chooses a specific target. This article studies area selection and attempts to distinguish between crime generators/visit detractors (elements that could affect anyone) and crime attractors/offense detractors (elements that affect offenders specifically).
Methods:
Trips that resulted in violent or property crimes between 506 census tracts in a large city (n = 11,411) are analyzed. Multilevel negative binomial regression is used to assess the impact of measures relating to pairs of tracts and characteristics of destination tracts.
Results:
Various factors are significantly related to the number of crime-associated trips per pair of tracts: differences in reward (residential and visiting population size, presence of schools or bars), differences in effort (distance between tracts, major roads linking both tracts), and differences in risk (level of social disorganization).
Conclusions:
This article supports an “opportunistic perspective” on crime: Crime-associated trips are more likely when advantages are high and risks and efforts are low.
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