The Journey to Crime and Victimization

• In Event: Situational Aspects of Crime and Victimization

Abstract

The offenders’ journey to crime has attracted attention in academic research and generated important information. Mobility triangles examine the distance among the offender’s residence, the victim’s residence, and offense location. The core of spatial analysis involves three distances: from the offender’ and victim’s residences to offense location and from the offender’s residence to victim’s residence. The latter two, however, have been relatively less examined. Although some research noted that offenders and victims tend to live close to each other, seldom examined is spatial detail and how it varies by offense type. This research uses crime data from the Houston Police Department to investigate spatial comparison of variations of journey to crime, journey to victimization, and the variation of distance between victim’s and offender’s residences for different types of crimes.

Authors

• Fei Luo, Sam Houston State University

• Yan Zhang, Sam Houston State University

• Larry Hoover, Sam Houston State University