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Explaining offenders’ longitudinal product-specific target selection through changes in disposability, availability, and value: an open-source intelligence web-scraping approach Crime Science Pub Date : 2022-02-22 Liam Quinn, Joseph Clare, Jade Lindley, Frank Morgan
Objective To address the gap in the literature and using a novel open-source intelligence web-scraping approach, this paper investigates the longitudinal relationships between availability, value, and disposability, and stealing counts of specific makes and models of gaming consoles. Methods Using data from Western Australia (2012–2019) and focusing on specific makes/models of gaming consoles, the
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Cryptocurrencies and future financial crime Crime Science Pub Date : 2022-01-05 Trozze, Arianna, Kamps, Josh, Akartuna, Eray Arda, Hetzel, Florian J., Kleinberg, Bennett, Davies, Toby, Johnson, Shane D.
Cryptocurrency fraud has become a growing global concern, with various governments reporting an increase in the frequency of and losses from cryptocurrency scams. Despite increasing fraudulent activity involving cryptocurrencies, research on the potential of cryptocurrencies for fraud has not been examined in a systematic study. This review examines the current state of knowledge about what kinds of
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More crime in cities? On the scaling laws of crime and the inadequacy of per capita rankings—a cross-country study Crime Science Pub Date : 2021-12-01 Oliveira, Marcos
Crime rates per capita are used virtually everywhere to rank and compare cities. However, their usage relies on a strong linear assumption that crime increases at the same pace as the number of people in a region. In this paper, we demonstrate that using per capita rates to rank cities can produce substantially different rankings from rankings adjusted for population size. We analyze the population–crime
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Offline crime bounces back to pre-COVID levels, cyber stays high: interrupted time-series analysis in Northern Ireland Crime Science Pub Date : 2021-11-10 Buil-Gil, David, Zeng, Yongyu, Kemp, Steven
Much research has shown that the first lockdowns imposed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic were associated with changes in routine activities and, therefore, changes in crime. While several types of violent and property crime decreased immediately after the first lockdown, online crime rates increased. Nevertheless, little research has explored the relationship between multiple lockdowns and crime
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Identifying seasonal spatial patterns of crime in a small northern city Crime Science Pub Date : 2021-10-26 Castle, Ysabel A., Kovacs, John M.
Objectives To explore spatial patterns of crime in a small northern city, and assess the degree of similarity in these patterns across seasons. Methods Calls for police service frequently associated with crime (theft, break and enter, domestic dispute, assault, and neighbor disputes) were acquired for a five year time span (2015–2019) for the city of North Bay, Ontario, Canada (population 50,396).
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The impact of the COVID-19, social distancing, and movement restrictions on crime in NSW, Australia Crime Science Pub Date : 2021-10-24 Wang, Joanna J. J., Fung, Thomas, Weatherburn, Donald
The spread of COVID-19 has prompted Governments around the world to impose draconian restrictions on business activity, public transport, and public freedom of movement. The effect of these restrictions appears to vary from country to country and, in some cases, from one area to another within a country. This paper examines the impact of the COVID-19 restrictions imposed in New South Wales (NSW) by
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The new normal of web camera theft on campus during COVID-19 and the impact of anti-theft signage Crime Science Pub Date : 2021-10-20 Chernoff, William A.
The opportunity for web camera theft increased globally as institutions of higher education transitioned to remote learning during COVID-19. Given the thousands of cameras currently installed in classrooms, many with little protection, the present study tests the effectiveness of anti-theft signage for preventing camera theft. Examined web camera theft at a southern, public university located in the
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The effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health calls for police service Crime Science Pub Date : 2021-10-11 Koziarski, Jacek
Drawing upon seven years of police calls for service data (2014–2020), this study examined the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on calls involving persons with perceived mental illness (PwPMI) using a Bayesian Structural Time Series. The findings revealed that PwPMI calls did not increase immediately after the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020. Instead, a sustained increase in PwPMI calls was
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A victim-centred cost–benefit analysis of a stalking prevention programme Crime Science Pub Date : 2021-10-09 Tompson, Lisa, Belur, Jyoti, Jerath, Kritika
Research suggests that stalking inflicts great psychological and financial costs on victims. Yet costs of victimisation are notoriously difficult to estimate and include as intangible costs in cost–benefit analysis. This study reports an innovative cost–benefit analysis that used focus groups with multi-agency teams to collect detailed data on operational resources used to manage stalking cases. This
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The impact of strict measures as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic on the spatial pattern of the demand for police: case study Antwerp (Belgium) Crime Science Pub Date : 2021-09-27 Dewinter, Maite, Vandeviver, Christophe, Dau, Philipp M., Vander Beken, Tom, Witlox, Frank
COVID-19 impacts the daily lives of millions of people. This radical change in our daily activities affected many aspects of life, but acted as well as a natural experiment for research into the spatial distribution of 911 calls. We analyse the impact of the COVID-19 measures on the spatial pattern of police interventions. Crime is not uniformly distributed across street segments, but how does COVID-19
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In the post-COVID-19 era, is the illegal wildlife trade the most serious form of trafficking? Crime Science Pub Date : 2021-09-13 Doody, J. Sean, Reid, Joan A., Bilali, Klejdis, Diaz, Jennifer, Mattheus, Nichole
Despite the immense impact of wildlife trafficking, comparisons of the profits, costs, and seriousness of crime consistently rank wildlife trafficking lower relative to human trafficking, drug trafficking and weapons trafficking. Using the published literature and current events, we make the case, when properly viewed within the context of COVID-19 and other zoonotic diseases transmitted from wildlife
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The influence of changing reward of electronic consumer goods on burglary and theft offences in Western market-based countries in the years prior to and during the crime drop Crime Science Pub Date : 2021-08-28 Quinn, Liam, Clare, Joseph
It is widely recognised that burglary and theft offence trends have broadly moved in parallel in ‘Western’ market-based countries since the 1950s. Most researchers have focussed on the trend from the early 1990s onwards, when burglary and theft offence rates plummeted. One major proposed explanation for this trend, relates to improved security. This paper draws on the longitudinal variations in reward
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A note on the multiplicative fairness score in the NIJ recidivism forecasting challenge Crime Science Pub Date : 2021-08-06 Mohler, George, Porter, Michael D.
Background The 2021 NIJ recidivism forecasting challenge asks participants to construct predictive models of recidivism while balancing false positive rates across groups of Black and white individuals through a multiplicative fairness score. We investigate the performance of several models for forecasting 1-year recidivism and optimizing the NIJ multiplicative fairness metric. Methods We consider
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Crime and COVID-19: effect of changes in routine activities in Mexico City Crime Science Pub Date : 2021-06-30 Patricio R. Estévez-Soto
Background This study aimed to determine whether crime patterns in Mexico City changed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and to test whether any changes observed were associated with the disruption of routine activities, as measured by changes in public transport passenger numbers. Method The first objective was assessed by comparing the observed incidence of crime after the COVID-19 pandemic was detected
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The U-shaped crime recovery during COVID-19: evidence from national crime rates in Mexico Crime Science Pub Date : 2021-06-30 Jose Roberto Balmori de la Miyar, Lauren Hoehn-Velasco, Adan Silverio-Murillo
The existing empirical evidence suggests a reduction in aggregate crime as a consequence of the COVID-19 lockdown. However, what happens when lockdown measures are relaxed? This paper considers how the COVID-19 pandemic affects crime rates throughout Mexico when the stay-at-home orders end. We use national crime data from Mexico’s National Public Security System, which reports municipality-level rates
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Using crime script analysis to elucidate the details of Amur tiger poaching in the Russian Far East Crime Science Pub Date : 2021-06-30 Allison Skidmore
Poaching is the most direct threat to the persistence of Amur tigers. However, little empirical evidence exists about the modus operandi of the offenders associated with this wildlife crime. Crime science can aid conservation efforts by identifying the patterns and opportunity structures that facilitate poaching. By employing semi-structured interviews and participants observation with those directly
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Antiquities in a time of conflict: a crime script analysis of antiquities trafficking during the Syrian Civil War and implications for conflict antiquities Crime Science Pub Date : 2021-06-23 Christine A. Weirich
The Syrian Civil War created an opportunity for increased trafficking of antiquities and has resulted in a renewed awareness on the part of a global audience. The persistence of criminal and organisational networks which facilitate antiquities trafficking networks (ATNs) has been recognised as significant, leading to increased interest in the development of new and improved methods of understanding
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Systematic review and meta-analysis of risk terrain modelling (RTM) as a spatial forecasting method Crime Science Pub Date : 2021-06-16 Zoe Marchment, Paul Gill
Background Several studies have tested the reliability of Risk Terrain Modelling (RTM) by focusing on different geographical contexts and types of crime or events. However, to date, there has been no attempt to systematically review the evidence on whether RTM is effective at predicting areas at high risk of events. This paper reviews RTM’s efficacy as a spatial forecasting method. Methods We conducted
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Where should police forces target their residential burglary reduction efforts? Using official victimisation data to predict burglary incidences at the neighbourhood level Crime Science Pub Date : 2021-06-05 James Hunter, Bethany Ward, Andromachi Tseloni, Ken Pease
Expected crime rates that enable police forces to contrast recorded and anticipated spatial patterns of crime victimisation offer a valuable tool in evaluating the under-reporting of crime and inform/guide crime reduction initiatives. Prior to this study, police forces had no access to expected burglary maps at the neighbourhood level covering all parts of England and Wales. Drawing on analysis of
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The impact of gunshots on place-level business activity Crime Science Pub Date : 2021-05-19 Christina Stacy, Yasemin Irvin-Erickson, Emily Tiry
Objectives Gun violence can negatively affect business activity at the place-level through a variety of mechanisms. However, estimating this effect is difficult since reported crime data are biased by factors that are also associated with business health. Despite some of its limitations, data from gunshot detection technology has been shown as a new valuable source of data on gun violence (Irvin-Erickson
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Illegal fishing and compliance management in marine protected areas: a situational approach Crime Science Pub Date : 2021-05-17 Damian Weekers, Gohar Petrossian, Lauric Thiault
Protected Areas (PAs) are spatially representative management tools that impose various levels of protection for conservation purposes. As spatially regulated places, ensuring compliance with the rules represents a key element of effective management and positive conservation outcomes. Wildlife crime, and in particular poaching, is a serious global problem that undermines the success of PAs. This study
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Retraction Note to: Do offenders avoid offending near home? A systematic review of the buffer zone hypothesis Crime Science Pub Date : 2021-04-28 Wim Bernasco, Remco van Dijke
This article has been retracted. Please see the Retraction Notice for more detail: https://doi.org/10.1186/s40163-021-00143-y
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Exploring regional variability in the short-term impact of COVID-19 on property crime in Queensland, Australia Crime Science Pub Date : 2021-03-08 Jason L. Payne, Anthony Morgan, Alex R. Piquero
Confronted by rapidly growing infection rates, hospitalizations and deaths, governments around the world have introduced stringent containment measures to help reduce the spread of COVID-19. This public health response has had an unprecedented impact on people’s daily lives which, unsurprisingly, has also had widely observed implications in terms of crime and public safety. Drawing upon theories from
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Six months in: pandemic crime trends in England and Wales Crime Science Pub Date : 2021-03-04 Samuel Langton, Anthony Dixon, Graham Farrell
Governments around the world have enforced strict guidelines on social interaction and mobility to control the spread of the COVID-19 virus. Evidence has begun to emerge which suggests that such dramatic changes in people’s routine activities have yielded similarly dramatic changes in criminal behavior. This study represents the first ‘look back’ on six months of the nationwide lockdown in England
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Policing and public health calls for service in Philadelphia Crime Science Pub Date : 2021-03-02 Jerry H. Ratcliffe
This contribution outlines various spatial and temporal aspects of medical or public-health related calls for service from the public to police in Philadelphia in 2019. These incidents comprise about 8% of the police department’s workload that originates from the public. Calls appear to be highly concentrated in a few areas, and specifically the Center City and Kensington neighborhoods. They are also
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Functional and dysfunctional fear of COVID-19: a classification scheme Crime Science Pub Date : 2021-02-05 Reka Solymosi, Jonathan Jackson, Krisztián Pósch, Julia A. Yesberg, Ben Bradford, Arabella Kyprianides
Worry about COVID-19 is a central topic of research into the social and economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. In this paper, we present a new way of measuring worry about catching COVID-19 that distinguishes between worry as a negative experience that damages people’s quality of life (dysfunctional) and worry as an adaptive experience that directs people’s attention to potential problems
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The effect of GPS refresh rate on measuring police patrol in micro-places Crime Science Pub Date : 2021-02-05 Oliver K. Hutt, Kate Bowers, Shane D. Johnson
With the increasing prevalence of police interventions implemented in micro hot-spots of crime, the accuracy with which officer foot patrols can be measured is increasingly important for the robust evaluation of such strategies. However, it is currently unknown how the accuracy of GPS traces impact upon our understanding of where officers are at a given time and how this varies for different GPS refresh
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Right place, right time? Making crime pattern theory time-specific Crime Science Pub Date : 2021-01-29 Sabine E. M. van Sleeuwen, Stijn Ruiter, Wouter Steenbeek
Objectives Crime pattern theory and the related empirical research have remained rather a-temporal, as if the timing of routine activities and crime plays no role. Building on previous geography of crime research, we extend crime pattern theory and propose that an offender’s spatial knowledge acquired during daily routine activities is not equally applicable to all times of day. Methods We put this
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Systematic review of situational prevention methods for crime against species Crime Science Pub Date : 2021-01-06 Dorothea Delpech, Herve Borrion, Shane Johnson
Illegal activities concerning terrestrial species (TS) are responsible for a variety of health, environmental, economic and security issues. The majority of academic research associated with species relates to conservation, with few publications specifically investigating the scale of crimes impacting species or how they can be prevented. This article systematically reviews the available evidence about
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Crime script analysis for adult image-based sexual abuse: a study of crime intervention points for retribution-style offenders Crime Science Pub Date : 2020-12-01 Abigail C. O’Hara, Ryan K. L. Ko, Lorraine Mazerolle, Jonah R. Rimer
Objective This research uses crime scripts to understand adult retribution-style image-based sexual abuse (RS-IBSA) offender decision-making and offending in offline and online environments. We explain the crime-commission process of adult RS-IBSA and identify crime intervention points at eight crime script stages. Methods Publicly released court transcripts of adult RS-IBSA prosecution cases (n = 18)
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Somehow I always end up alone: COVID-19, social isolation and crime in Queensland, Australia Crime Science Pub Date : 2020-11-24 Martin A. Andresen, Tarah Hodgkinson
The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically affected social life. In efforts to reduce the spread of the virus, countries around the world implemented social restrictions, including social distancing, working from home, and the shuttering of numerous businesses. These social restrictions have also affected crime rates. In this study, we investigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the frequency of
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To SPB or not to SPB? A mixed methods analysis of self-protective behaviours to prevent repeat victimisation from cyber abuse Crime Science Pub Date : 2020-11-11 Zarina I. Vakhitova, Rob I. Mawby, Clair L. Alston-Knox, Callum A. Stephens
This paper presents the findings from a mixed-methods examination of self-protective behaviours (SPBs) adopted by victims of cyber abuse from the rational choice perspective. The data from a sample of the U.S. adults ( $$N = 746$$ N = 746 ), members of an online opt-in panel, were analysed to first distinguish the types of SPBs adopted by victims of cyber abuse using a thematic analysis of open-ended
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A framework for estimating crime location choice based on awareness space Crime Science Pub Date : 2020-11-04 Sophie Curtis-Ham, Wim Bernasco, Oleg N. Medvedev, Devon Polaschek
This paper extends Crime Pattern Theory, proposing a theoretical framework which aims to explain how offenders’ previous routine activity locations influence their future offence locations. The framework draws on studies of individual level crime location choice and location choice in non-criminal contexts, to identify attributes of prior activities associated with the selection of the location for
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A machine learning analysis of serious misconduct among Australian police Crime Science Pub Date : 2020-10-31 Timothy I. C. Cubitt, Ken R. Wooden, Karl A. Roberts
Fairness in policing, driven by the effective and transparent investigation and remediation of police misconduct, is vital to maintaining the legitimacy of policing agencies, and the capacity for police to function within society. Research into police misconduct in Australia has traditionally been performed on an ad-hoc basis, with limited access to law enforcement data. This research seeks to identify
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Disentangling community-level changes in crime trends during the COVID-19 pandemic in Chicago Crime Science Pub Date : 2020-10-27 Gian Maria Campedelli, Serena Favarin, Alberto Aziani, Alex R. Piquero
Recent studies exploiting city-level time series have shown that, around the world, several crimes declined after COVID-19 containment policies have been put in place. Using data at the community-level in Chicago, this work aims to advance our understanding on how public interventions affected criminal activities at a finer spatial scale. The analysis relies on a two-step methodology. First, it estimates
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“Show this thread”: policing, disruption and mobilisation through Twitter. An analysis of UK law enforcement tweeting practices during the Covid-19 pandemic Crime Science Pub Date : 2020-10-21 Manja Nikolovska, Shane D. Johnson, Paul Ekblom
Crisis and disruption are often unpredictable and can create opportunities for crime. During such times, policing may also need to meet additional challenges to handle the disruption. The use of social media by officials can be essential for crisis mitigation and crime reduction. In this paper, we study the use of Twitter for crime mitigation and reduction by UK police (and associated) agencies in
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Minor covid-19 association with crime in Sweden Crime Science Pub Date : 2020-10-11 Manne Gerell, Johan Kardell, Johanna Kindgren
The covid-19 disease has a large impact on life across the globe, and this could potentially include impacts on crime. The present study describes how crime has changed in Sweden during ten weeks after the government started to implement interventions to reduce spread of the disease. Sweden has undertaken smaller interventions than many other countries and is therefore a particularly interesting case
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Unsupervised identification of crime problems from police free-text data Crime Science Pub Date : 2020-10-07 Daniel Birks, Alex Coleman, David Jackson
We present a novel exploratory application of unsupervised machine-learning methods to identify clusters of specific crime problems from unstructured modus operandi free-text data within a single administrative crime classification. To illustrate our proposed approach, we analyse police recorded free-text narrative descriptions of residential burglaries occurring over a two-year period in a major metropolitan
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Age-period-cohort effects in half a century of motor vehicle theft in the United States Crime Science Pub Date : 2020-10-01 Anthony Dixon, Graham Farrell
Adopting and refining O’Brien’s S-constraint approach, we estimate age-period-cohort effects for motor vehicle theft offences in the United States for over half a century from 1960. Taking the well-established late-teen peak offending age as given, we find period effects reducing theft in the 1970 s, and period, but particularly cohort effects, reducing crime from the 1990s onwards. We interpret these
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Too far for comfort? Situational access to emergency medical care and violent assault lethality Crime Science Pub Date : 2020-08-17 Lucia Summers, Tiffany Gentry Rogers
This research demonstrates the relationship between situational access to emergency medical care and assault lethality, by comparing attempted and completed murders in Greater London, England, over a five-year period (N = 1512 victims). Access to emergency care was operationalised using the time taken to contact emergency services, the distance from the nearest ambulance station, and the distance to
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AI-enabled future crime Crime Science Pub Date : 2020-08-05 M. Caldwell, J. T. A. Andrews, T. Tanay, L. D. Griffin
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Fraud against businesses both online and offline: crime scripts, business characteristics, efforts, and benefits Crime Science Pub Date : 2020-07-09 Marianne Junger, Victoria Wang, Marleen Schlömer
This study analyses 300 cases of fraudulent activities against Dutch businesses, 100 from each of the following three categories: CEO-fraud, fraudulent contract, and ghost invoice. We examine crime scripts, key characteristics of targeted businesses, and the relationship between input criminal effort and output financial benefit. Results indicate that whilst all CEO-frauds are conducted online, most
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Crime and coronavirus: social distancing, lockdown, and the mobility elasticity of crime Crime Science Pub Date : 2020-07-06 Eric Halford, Anthony Dixon, Graham Farrell, Nicolas Malleson, Nick Tilley
Governments around the world restricted movement of people, using social distancing and lockdowns, to help stem the global coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. We examine crime effects for one UK police force area in comparison to 5-year averages. There is variation in the onset of change by crime type, some declining from the WHO ‘global pandemic’ announcement of 11 March, others later. By 1 week after
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Routine activity effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on burglary in Detroit, March, 2020 Crime Science Pub Date : 2020-06-23 Marcus Felson, Shanhe Jiang, Yanqing Xu
The spread of the coronavirus has led to containment policies in many places, with concomitant shifts in routine activities. Major declines in crime have been reported as a result. However, those declines depend on crime type and may differ by parts of a city and land uses. This paper examines burglary in Detroit, Michigan during the month of March, 2020, a period of considerable change in routine
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Do offenders avoid offending near home? A systematic review of the buffer zone hypothesis Crime Science Pub Date : 2020-05-27 Wim Bernasco, Remco van Dijke
Background There is general agreement that the frequency of crime decreases with the distance from the offender’s home. By way of exception to this distance decay pattern, the buffer zone hypothesis states that offenders avoid offending very close to home. The purpose of the present study was to assess the validity of this hypothesis. Methods We conducted a systematic literature review of 4 bibliographic
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A systematic review on spatial crime forecasting Crime Science Pub Date : 2020-05-27 Ourania Kounadi, Alina Ristea, Adelson Araujo, Michael Leitner
Background Predictive policing and crime analytics with a spatiotemporal focus get increasing attention among a variety of scientific communities and are already being implemented as effective policing tools. The goal of this paper is to provide an overview and evaluation of the state of the art in spatial crime forecasting focusing on study design and technical aspects. Methods We follow the PRISMA
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Initial evidence on the relationship between the coronavirus pandemic and crime in the United States Crime Science Pub Date : 2020-05-18 Matthew P. J. Ashby
The COVID-19 pandemic led to substantial changes in the daily activities of millions of Americans, with many businesses and schools closed, public events cancelled and states introducing stay-at-home orders. This article used police-recorded open crime data to understand how the frequency of common types of crime changed in 16 large cities across the United States in the early months of 2020. Seasonal
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Near-repeat victimization of sex crimes and threat incidents against women and girls in Tokyo, Japan Crime Science Pub Date : 2020-05-13 Mamoru Amemiya, Tomoki Nakaya, Takahito Shimada
Near-repeat victimization (NRV) is a phenomenon in which there is a greater likelihood for a subsequent crime to occur within close spatiotemporal proximity of the last occurrence of a similar crime. This study investigated the NRV of sex crimes and threat incidents against women and girls in Tokyo. An analysis using the Knox ratio showed significant near-repeat patterns of sex crimes and two types
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Further rejection of the cybercrime hypothesis Crime Science Pub Date : 2020-05-12 Graham Farrell, Daniel Birks
We recently rejected the hypothesis that increases in cybercrime may have caused the international crime drop. Critics subsequently argued that offenders switched from physical crime to cybercrime in recent years, and that lifestyle changes due to ‘leisure IT’ may have caused the international crime drop. Here we explain how the critics misrepresented our argument and do not appear to introduce anything
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Learning to rank spatio-temporal event hotspots Crime Science Pub Date : 2020-03-20 George Mohler, Michael Porter, Jeremy Carter, Gary LaFree
Background Crime, traffic accidents, terrorist attacks, and other space-time random events are unevenly distributed in space and time. In the case of crime, hotspot and other proactive policing programs aim to focus limited resources at the highest risk crime and social harm hotspots in a city. A crucial step in the implementation of these strategies is the construction of scoring models used to rank
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Constellations of youth criminogenic factors associated with young adult violent criminal behavior Crime Science Pub Date : 2020-01-30 Menno Segeren, Thijs Fassaert, Matty de Wit, Arne Popma
This study identified constellations of childhood risk factors associated with violent criminal behavior in early adulthood. Police data were used to sample violent and nonviolent offenders from a population of young adult males with a history of juvenile probation. Risk factors were retrieved from their juvenile probation files. A single classification tree analysis organized these into a decision
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What is security worth to consumers? Investigating willingness to pay for secure Internet of Things devices Crime Science Pub Date : 2020-01-08 John M. Blythe, Shane D. Johnson, Matthew Manning
The Internet of Things (IoT) is considered the next technological revolution. IoT devices include once everyday objects that are now internet connected, such as smart locks and smart fridges, but also new types of devices to include home assistants. However, while this increased interconnectivity brings considerable benefits, it can and does increase people’s exposure to crime risk. This is particularly
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Identification of subgroups of terror attacks with shared characteristics for the purpose of preventing mass-casualty attacks: a data-mining approach Crime Science Pub Date : 2019-12-01 Gonen Singer, Maya Golan
Security and intelligence agencies around the world invest considerable resources in preventing terrorist attacks, as these may cause strategic damage, national demoralization, infringement of sovereignty, and government instability. Recently, data-mining techniques have evolved to allow identification of patterns and associations in criminal data that were not apparent using traditional analysis.
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Beyond crime rates and community surveys: a new approach to police accountability and performance measurement Crime Science Pub Date : 2019-11-08 Tarah Hodgkinson, Tullio Caputo, Michael L. McIntyre
In this conceptual piece, we argue that the current approach to police performance measurement typically based on the use of traditional police metrics has failed to achieve the desired results and that a different strategy is required. Traditional police metrics have a narrow focus on crime and the police response to it. They provide little information on how well police organizations are performing
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What about cyberspace (and cybercrime alongside it)? A reply to Farrell and Birks “Did cybercrime cause the crime drop?” Crime Science Pub Date : 2019-10-21 Fernando Miró-Llinares, Asier Moneva
In this paper we question Farrell and Birks’ assertion of the emergence of cybercrime as an invalid explanation for the crime drop. Alternatively to the “cybercrime hypothesis”, we propose two non-exclusive hypotheses that highlight the essential role of cyberspace as an environment that has shifted criminal opportunities from physical to virtual space, which reflects on crime trends. The first hypothesis
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Toward a test of the “Law of Crime Concentration” in Japanese cities: a geographical crime analysis in Tokyo and Osaka Crime Science Pub Date : 2019-10-13 Mamoru Amemiya, Tomoya Ohyama
This brief report aims to reveal crime concentration at the district level in Tokyo and Osaka, Japan, two cities characterized by low crime rates. Eight types of property crimes that occurred between 2008 and 2017 in Tokyo and Osaka and had been aggregated by the census enumeration district were analyzed using the Gini coefficient based on the Poisson-Gamma method. The results indicated three patterns
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Testimony at court: a randomised controlled trial investigating the art and science of persuading witnesses and victims to attend trial Crime Science Pub Date : 2019-10-03 Evie Monnington-Taylor, Kate Bowers, Pippa Streeter Hurle, Liz Ward, Simon Ruda, Martin Sweeney, Alex Murray, Jo Whitehouse
The presence of civilian witnesses and victims in court is central to the effective operation of the criminal justice system. However, there is evidence of significant non-attendance which can result in ineffective and cracked trials. To address this, West Midlands Police Witness Care Unit and the Behavioural Insights Team designed an intervention using behavioural insight principles consisting of
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Experimental assessment of the viability of using ground penetrating radar for metal wire-snare detection Crime Science Pub Date : 2019-09-23 Hervé Borrion, Amin Amiri, Dorothea Delpech, A. M. Lemieux
Wildlife crime is an international issue with the illicit trade of flora and fauna estimated to be worth several billion dollars. In national parks, the problem can often be summarised as an arms race, with poachers trying to remain undetected by park rangers and other security personnel that are trying to protect the natural habitat and species from exploitation. Within this context, the detection
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Opportunity and rationality as an explanation for suspicious vehicle fires: demonstrating the relevance of time, place, and economic factors Crime Science Pub Date : 2019-08-30 Hannah Kelly, Joseph Clare, Kathryn Wuschke, Len Garis
Opportunity theories of crime emphasize the non-random spatial and temporal patterning of criminal events. Such theoretical development has proven useful when extended beyond traditional applications to crime event data. This study continues to explore the wider utility of such criminological theories by examining the spatio-temporal patterns of vehicle fires through an opportunity lens. Specifically
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Competitive dominance, gang size and the directionality of gang violence Crime Science Pub Date : 2019-08-30 P. Jeffrey Brantingham, Matthew Valasik, George E. Tita
Intergroup violence is assumed to play a key role in establishing and maintaining gang competitive dominance. However, it is not clear how competitive ability, gang size and reciprocal violence interact. Does competitive dominance lead to larger gangs, or allow them to remain small? Does competitive dominance lead gangs to mount more attacks against rivals, or expose them to more attacks? We explore