Abstract
This study examines journey-to-crime trips by gender and by age group for offenders who committed crimes in Manchester, England. The data are 97,429 crimes committed in 2006 by 56,368 offenders in which both the residence location of the offender and the crime location were known. Approximately one in six crimes was committed by women and by juveniles. The analysis showed gender differences in crime travel with interactions by age group, location of the crime, the presence of co-offenders, and ethnicity. Juvenile males had the shortest average trip lengths while adult males had the longest. Female offenders, both juveniles and adults, had crime trips of intermediate length but with a higher percentage being committed in major commercial centres. Around one-quarter of the trips were committed in conjunction with co-offenders, who generally lived quite close to the offender.
A negative binomial regression model showed that multiple factors contribute to the journey-to-crime distance traveled including type of crime, age and ethnicity of the offender, crime prolificacy of the offender, presence of co-offenders, and location and land use where crimes occurred. Controlling for these factors, with the exception of shoplifting, female offenders traveled shorter distances in committing their crimes, on average, than male offenders. For shoplifting, female offenders traveled longer distances because a higher proportion of those crimes were committed in the central retail core or in town centres.
The results indicate that simple generalisations about criminal travel are suspect. Instead, crime travel must be understood as reflecting the interaction of the type of crime, the characteristics of the metropolitan structure, the presence of accomplices, and offender characteristics, particularly gender and age.
The authors wish to thank the National Institute of Justice for funding (grant 2005-IJ-CX-K037) and the Greater Manchester Police for access to crime and offender data, compliant with the 1998 U.K. Data Protection Act. The authors also wish to thank Dr. Richard Block of Loyola University, Chicago, for suggestions on improving the paper. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 4th International Conference on Women’s Issues in Transportation sponsored Transportation Research Board, Newport Beach, CA., 2009.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
These records provided information on the offenders and their crimes. The address where the offender was living at the time of his or her arrest was taken as the residence address. We recognise, of course, that some offenders may have moved since the time they committed their crime, a well known phenomenon with police records (Bernasco 2010). Change of address details are not indicated on crime reports, but as intelligence on an individual tracking system. Upon investigation, any change of address is dealt with according to what is happening to the offender. For instance the offender may have been bailed from one offence, and have moved since. The individual could then be arrested whilst on bail, in which case the new address would be recorded on the second crime record. Bail would then be opposed, citing the fact that the offender moved whilst on bail for the previous offence. Analysts on the other hand would refer to the intelligence about offenders’ addresses to assess the geography of their criminal activities; attribute other crimes to them (comparative case analysis) or suggest locations for finding them if they had gone missing.
- 2.
For example, in the previous year (2004/05) there were 85,816 persons arrested in the Greater Manchester region and in the subsequent year (2006/07) there were 89,510 arrested compared to 87,858 for 2005/06 (Ministry of Justice 2008). The trend over the three years represents an average annual increase of 2%.
- 3.
We did not examine the remaining crimes as a minor category (17%) because they represented many different types.
- 4.
Unfortunately, as is well known in police departments, crimes committed ‘on the street’ is a miscellaneous category that is non-specific as to the land use relationship. In an earlier study (Levine and Wachs 1986), it was shown that a sizeable proportion of crimes that occurred in central Los Angeles were categorised as being committed ‘on the street’, many of which were related to transit use by the victims.
- 5.
Note that this organisation is different than in most U.S. cities where large suburban shopping centres compete with those in the central city. Many cities in the U.S. have reduced commercial activities in the central city.
- 6.
- 7.
This was estimated by the difference between the total number of crimes per district and the number of crimes in our database per district. We recognise that some of the crimes attributed to non-arrested offenders may actually have been committed by the arrested offenders. However, this seemed a better test than comparing the distribution of crimes by arrested offenders to the total distribution of crimes.
- 8.
The function was estimated with the CrimeStat journey-to-crime calibration routine that interpolates travel distances to a distance scale using a smoothing function, called a kernel, which is then re-scaled as a proportion (Levine 2005, Ch. 10).
- 9.
Even though the Mann–Whitney ‘U’ test is used as a non-parametric version of the t-test, it actually is a distributional test and not just of the means relative to their standard deviations.
- 10.
This analysis is based on a crime location that has the same coordinates as the residence location. We cannot determine whether the crime occurred within the residence of the offender (domestic crime) or at another unit within the same building.
- 11.
The maps were created with CrimeStat using the trip distribution module tools (Levine 2004, Ch. 14). Essentially, a fine grid was overlaid on to a map of Manchester and the routine assigned the crime events to both an origin cell and a destination cell. The number of links between the origin and the destinations are calculated and output as a line.
- 12.
Over-dispersion occurs when the expected (predicted) variance is greater than the expected mean and is most likely the result of combining different underlying Poisson distributions. The Poisson distribution assumes that the expected variance will equal the expected mean. However, most count distributions show over-dispersion and are the primary rationale for using models like the negative binomial (Cameron and Trivedi 1998).
- 13.
The model was tested with negative binomial regression model in version 3.3 of CrimeStat (Levine 2010).
- 14.
This is true for conventional shopping, not online shopping where men exceed women in purchases; Ditmar et al. 2004.
References
Arndale (2012). History of Manchester Arndale. http://www.manchesterarndale.com/history_of_manchester_arndale.aspx. Accessed 12 Jan 2012
Berman G (2010) IV. Youth crime and punishment in England and Wales. Research paper 10/02. Parliament, London. http://www.parliament.uk/briefingpapers/commons/lib/research/briefings/snsg-05277.pdf
Bernasco W (2010) A sentimental journey to crime: effects of residential history on crime location choice. Criminology 48(2):389–416
Bernasco W, Block R (2009) Where offenders choose to attack: a discrete choice model of robberies in Chicago. Criminology 47(1):93–130
Bernasco W, Nieuwbeerta P (2005) How do residential burglars select target areas? Br J Criminol 44:296–315
Blalock HM Jr (1979) Social statistics, Rev. 2nd edn. McGraw-Hill, New York
Block R, Bernasco W (2009) Finding a serial Burglar’s home using distance decay and origin–destination patterns: a test of empirical Bayes journey-to-crime estimation in The Hague. J Investig Psychol Offender Profil 6:187–211
Block R, Helms D (2005) Chapter 17: Case studies in crime travel demand modeling. In Levine N (ed) CrimeStat: a spatial statistics program for the analysis of crime incident locations (version 3.0). Ned Levine and Associates, Houston TX, National Institute of Justice, Washington, DC. November. http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/crimestat.
Block R, Galary A, Brice D (2007) The journey to crime: victims and offenders converge in violent crime offences in Chicago. Secur J 20:123–137
Brantingham PJ, Brantingham PL (2008) Crime pattern theory. In: Wortley R, Mazerolle L (eds) Environmental criminology and crime analysis. Willan, Devon
Broidy LM, Cauffman EE (2006) Understanding the female offender. Final report 2001-IJ-CX-0034. National Institute of Justice, U.S. Department of Justice, Washington, DC. http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/216615.pdf
Burgess EW (1925) The growth of the city: an introduction to a research project. In: Park RE, Burgess EW, Mackensie RD (eds) The city. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, pp 47–62
Cameron AC, Trivedi PK (1998) Regression analysis of count data. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Canter D, Larkin P (1993) The environmental range of serial rapists. J Environ Psychol 13:63–69
Capone DL, Nichols WW Jr (1975) Crime and distance: an analysis of offender behaviour in space, Proc Assoc Am Geogr 7:45–49
Chesney-Lind, M (1989) Girls’ crime and woman’s place: awards a feminist model of female delinquency. Crime Delinq 35(1):5–29
Cohen LE, Felson M (1979) Social change and crime rate trends: a routine activity approach. Am Sociol Rev 44:588–608
Crowe A (2000) “Chapter 2: Jurisdictional and program self-assessment”, Jurisdictional technical assistance package for juvenile corrections. Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice, Washington, DC. http://www.ncjrs.gov/html/ojjdp/juris_tap_report/ch2_06.html.
Demographia (1998) U. S. Metropolitan Areas: 1998 central city and suburban population. Wendell Cox Consultancy, Belleville, IL. http://www.demographia.com/db-usmsacc98.htm
Ditmar H, Long K, Meek R (2004) Buying on the internet: gender differences in on-line and conventional buying motivations. Sex Roles 50(5/6):423–443
FBI (1997) Table 35 Total arrest trends, Sex, 1991–1995, In Federal Bureau of Investigation Crime in the United States 1997, U.S. Department of Justice, Washington, DC. http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/Cius_97/95CRIME/95crime4.pdf.
FBI (2008) Table 33 Ten-year arrest trends by sex 1999–2008, In Federal Bureau of Investigation, Crime in the United States 2008, U.S. Department of Justice, Washington, DC. http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2008/data/table_33.html.
Fritzon K (2001) An examination of the relationship between distance travelled and motivational aspects of firesetting behaviour. J Environ Psychol 21:45–60
Groff ER, McEwen JT (2005) Disaggregating the journey to homicide. In: Wang F (ed) Geographic information systems and crime analysis. Idea Group Publishing, Hershey
Hanson S, Hanson P (1980) The impact of women’s employment on household travel patterns: a Swedish example. Rosenbloom S (ed), Women’s travel issues: research needs and priorities: conference proceedings and papers, U.S. Department of Transportation. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office
Hilbe JM (2008) Negative binomial regression (with corrections). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Home Office (2001) Arrests for notifiable offences and the operation of certain police powers Under PACE England and Wales 2000/01 19/01 http://rds.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs/hosb1901.pdf
ICSC (2009). How the recession has impacted consumer shopping habits. International Council of Shopping Centers, New York. http://www.icsc.org/web/RecessionBooklet_lores.pdf
Kanji GK (1993) 100 statistical tests. Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks
Kneebone E, Raphael S (2011) City and suburban crime trends in Metropolitan America. Metropolitan opportunity series, Metropolitan Policy Program, Brookings Institution, Washington, DC. http://www.brookings.edu/papers/2011/0526_metropolitan_crime_kneebone_raphael.aspx. 28 May
LeBeau JL (1987) The journey to rape: geographic distance and the rapist’s method of approaching the victim. J Police Sci and Adm 15(2):129–136
Leitner M, Kent JK (2009) A Bayesian journey to crime modeling of single- and multiple crime type series in Baltimore County, MD. J Investig Psychol Offender Profil 6(3):213–236
Levine N (2005) CrimeStat: a spatial statistics program for the analysis of crime incident locations (version 3.0). Ned Levine and Associates/National Institute of Justice, , Houston, TX/Washington, DC. November. http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/crimestat. Chapters 6, 10–16
Levine N (2007) Crime travel demand and bank robberies: using CrimeStat III to model bank robbery trips. Soc Sci Comput Rev 25(2):239–258
Levine N (2010) CrimeStat III: A Spatial Statistics Program for the Analysis of Crime Incident Locations (version 3.3). Ned Levine & Associates, Houston, TX.; National Institute of Justice, Washington, DC. July
Levine N, Block R (2011) Bayesian journey-to-crime estimation: an improvement in geographic profiling methodology. Prof Geogr 63(2):213-229
Levine N, Canter P (2011) Linking origins with destinations for DWI motor vehicle crashes: an application of crime travel demand modeling. Crime Mapp 3:7–41
Levine N, Lee P (2009) Bayesian journey-to-crime modeling of juvenile and adult offenders by gender in Manchester. J Investig Psychol Offender Profil 6:237–251
Levine N, Wachs M (1986) Bus crime in Los Angeles: I - Measuring the incidence. Trans Res 20(4): 273–284
Lord D (2006) Modeling motor vehicle crashes using Poisson-gamma models: examining the effects of low sample mean values and small sample size on the estimation of the fixed dispersion parameter. Accid Anal Prev 38:751–766
Lottier S (1938) Distribution of criminal offences in metropolitan regions. J Crim Law Criminol Police Sci 29:37–50
Manchester City Council (2012) The council and democracy. List of metropolitan areas in Greater Manchester. Opening page. http://www.manchester.gov.uk/info/100004/the_council_and_democracy/66/councils_in_greater_manchester/1. Last accessed 12 Feb 2012
Manchester UK (2011) The IRA Bombing of City Centre Manchester – June 1996. http://www.manchester2002-uk.com/buildings/bombing.html. Last accessed 12 Feb 2012
Miaou S-P (1996) Measuring the goodness-of-fit of accident prediction models. FHWA-RD-96-040. Federal Highway Administration, U.S. Department of Transportation, Washington, DC
Miller J (1998) Up it up: gender and the accomplishment of street robbery. Criminology 36(1):37–65
Ministry of Justice (2008) Arrests for recorded crime (Notifiable Offences) and the operation of certain police powers under PACE England and Wales 2006/07. http://www.justice.gov.uk/publications/arrestsfornotibleoffences.htm. Accessed 26 July 2010
Ministry of Justice (2010) Criminal statistics: England and Wales 2008. Ministry of Justice: London. http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/+/http://www.justice.gov.uk/about/docs/criminal-stats-2008.pdf. Accessed 13 May 2011
Morash M (2006) Understanding gender, crime and justice. Sage, Thousand Oaks
Mulvey EP, Schubert CA, Chassin L (2010) Substance use and delinquent behaviour among serious adolescent offenders. NCJ 232790, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice, Washington, DC. http://www.ojjdp.gov/publications/PubAbstract.asp?pubi=254883.
Newton A, Hirschfield A (2009) Measuring violence in and around licensed premises: the need for a better evidence base. Crime Prev Commun Saf 11(3):171–188
NHMC (2012) Quick facts: resident demographics. National Multi Housing Council: Washington, DC. http://www.nmhc.org/Content.cfm?ItemNumber=55508. Accessed 28 Apr 2012
Otnes C, McGrath MA (2001) Perceptions and realities of male shopping behaviour. J Retail 77(1):111–137
Paulsen D (2007) Improving geographic profiling through commuter/marauder prediction. Police Pract Res 8:347–357
Pettiway LE (1995) Copping crack: the travel behaviour of crack users. Justice Q 12(3):499–524
Phillips PD (1980) Characteristics and typology of the journey-to-crime. In: Georges-Abeyie D, Harries KD (eds) Crime: a spatial perspective. Columbia University Press, New York, pp 156–166
Pointer G (2005) The U.K.’s major urban areas. Focus on people and migration. U.K. National Statistics, Office for National Statistics. Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions, United Kingdom. http://www.statistics.gov.uk/downloads/theme_compendia/fom2005/03_fopm_urbanareas.pdf
Puzzanchera C (2009) Juvenile Arrests 2008. Juvenile Justice Bulletin. Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice, Washington, DC, December. http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/ojjdp/228479.pdf
Pyle GF (1974) The spatial dynamics of crime. Department of Geography Research Paper No. 159, University of Chicago, Chicago
Rand MR, SabolWJ, Sinclair M, Snyder HN (2010) Table 20: Location of alcohol-involved incidents known to law enforcement, 2007. Alcohol and crime: data from 2002 to 2008. Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. Department of Justice: Washington, DC. http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/acf/20_location_by_offender.cfm. Accessed 30 Nov 2010
Rengert GF (1975) Some effects of being female on criminal spatial behaviour. PA Geogr 13(2):10–18
Rengert GF, Piquero AR, Jones PR (1999) Distance decay re-examined. Criminology 37(2):427–445
Rhodes WM, Conly C (1981) Crime and mobility: an empirical study. In: Brantingham PJ, Brantingham PL (eds) Environmental criminology. Waveland Press, Inc, Prospect Heights, pp 167–188
Roncek DW, Maier PA (1991) Bars, blocks and crimes revisited: linking the theory of routine activities to the empiricisms of ‘Hot Spots’. Criminology 29(4):725–753
Rosenbloom S (2005) Understanding women’s and men’s travel patterns: the research challenge. In Federal Highway Administration, Women’s travel issues: proceedings of the second national conference, U.S. Department of Transportation, Washington, DC. 7–28. http://onlinepubs.trb.org/Onlinepubs/conf/CP35v1.pdf
Schwartz J, Steffensmeier D (2007) The nature of female offending: patterns and explanation. In: Zaplin RT (ed) Female offenders: critical perspectives and effective interventions, 2nd edn. Jones and Bartlett Publishers, Sudbury, pp 43–75
Smith TS (1976) Inverse distance variations for the flow of crime in urban areas. Soc Force 25(4):804–815
Smith W, Bond JW, Townsley M (2009) Determining how journeys-to-crime vary: measuring inter- and intra-offender crime trip distributions. In: Weisburd D, Bernasco W, Bruinsma G (eds) Putting crime in its place: units of analysis in spatial crime research. Springer, New York
Snook B (2004) Individual differences in distance travelled by serial burglars. J Investig Psychol Offender Profil 1:53–66
Snook B, Taylor PJ, Bennell C (2004) Geographic profiling: the fast, frugal and accurate way. Appl Cogn Psychol 18:105–121
Snook B, Cullen RM, Mokros A, Harbort S (2005) Serial murderers’ spatial decisions: factors that influence crime location choice. J Investig Psychol Offender Profil 2:147–164
Steffensmeier D, Allan E (1996) Gender and crime: toward a gendered theory of female offending. Annu Rev Sociol 22:459–487
Thrasher FM (1927) The gang. University of Chicago Press, Chicago
TGM (2012) Transport for greater Manchester. Manchester, England. http://www.tfgm.com/Pages/default.aspx
Townsley M, Sidebottom A (2010) All offenders are equal, but some are more equal than others: variations in journeys to crime between offenders. Criminology 48(3):897–917
Turner S (1969) Delinquency and distance. In: Wolfgang ME, Sellin T (eds) Delinquency: selected studies. Wiley, New York, pp 11–26
U.K. National Statistics (2000). Table 10.2. Households with regular use of car: 2000. General household survey and family expenditure survey, Office for National Statistics National Travel Survey, Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions, United Kingdom. http://www.statistics.gov.uk/STATBASE/ssdataset.asp?vlnk=6067
U.S. Census Bureau (2000) All across the USA: Population distribution, 1999. In Population profile of the United States: 1999. Bureau of the Census, U. S. Department of Commerce, Washington, DC, chapter 2
U.S. Census Bureau (2002) “Vehicles available and household income in 1999: 2000”. Table QT-H11, Census 2000 Summary File 3 (SF 3) – Sample Data, Bureau of the Census, U. S. Department of Commerce: Washington, DC. http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/QTTable?_bm=yand-geo_id=Dand-qr_name=DEC_2000_SFAIAN_QTH11and-ds_name=Dand-_lang=en.
Van Koppen PJ, Jansen RWJ (1998) The road to the robbery: travel patterns in commercial robberies. Br J Criminol 38:230–246
Warren J, Reboussin R, Hazelwood RR, Cummings A, Gibbs N, Trumbetta S (1998) Crime scene and distance correlates of serial rape. J Quant Criminol 14(1):35–59
Wharton and Verde (2007) ‘Men buy, women shop’: the sexes have different priorities when walking down the aisles. Jay H. Baker Retail Initiative, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania and Verde Group: Philadelphia and Toronto. http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm;jsessionid=9a30c1e100f3523587b6?articleid=1848
White RC (1932) The relationship of felonies to environmental factors in Indianapolis. Social Force 10(4):488–509
Wikipedia (2009) List of metropolitan areas in the United Kingdom. Wikipedia. http://wapedia.mobi/en/List_of_metropolitan_areas_in_the_United_Kingdom#1. Accessed 8 Jan 2009
Wikipedia (2010) Manchester Arndale. Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manchester_Arndale_Centre. Accessed 20 July 2010
Wiles P, Costello A (2000) the ‘road to nowhere’: the evidence for travelling criminals. Home Office Research Study, No. 207. Research, Development and Statistics Directorate, London. http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/prgpdfs/brf400.pdf
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2013 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Levine, N., Lee, P. (2013). Journey-to-Crime by Gender and Age Group in Manchester, England. In: Leitner, M. (eds) Crime Modeling and Mapping Using Geospatial Technologies. Geotechnologies and the Environment, vol 8. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4997-9_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4997-9_7
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-007-4996-2
Online ISBN: 978-94-007-4997-9
eBook Packages: Earth and Environmental ScienceEarth and Environmental Science (R0)