Reconstructing Adolescents’ Journeys to Crime With a Space-Time Budget Instrument

• In Event: Crime and Place: A Micro-Macro Perspective

Abstract

Most prior research on the journey to crime has only measured the distances and angles between the offenders’ homes and the locations of their offenses. Little is known about actual journeys to crime. This study extends our knowledge of offender mobility by providing an activity-based description of the journey to crime among adolescents, including (1) the main activities performed in the prelude to crime, (2) the times and durations of these activities, (3) the locations and functions of the places where these activities occurred, and (4)  the social settings of these activities. A sample of 868 adolescents in The Hague, the Netherlands, completed a space-time budget interview that recorded, from hour to hour, their activities (including offending) and whereabouts during four days in the week before the interview. Two years later 616 participated again. Because some adolescents had been involved in offending during the four days covered, 104 journeys to crime were reconstructed. Although they display a great deal of variation, some patterns emerge. In the onset of many offenses, adolescents go to school in the morning, return home in the afternoon and go out and offend in the late afternoon or early evening, typically while socializing with peers in public spaces.

Authors

• Wim Bernasco, Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement (NSCR)

• Gerben J. N. Bruinsma, Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement (NSCR)

• Lieven Pauwels, Ghent University

• Frank Weerman, NSCR