Isolating Extreme Outliers in the Distribution of Area-Level Burglary Victimizations: Revisiting an Old Postulate

• In Event: Violent and Property Crime Victimization Social Context and Hot Spots

Abstract

One of the most widely accepted facts in the victimization literature is that a select group of repeat victims experiences far more incidents than what would be expected based on random chance alone. Conventional wisdom holds that many of these repeat victims live near one another in the same areas, generating high area-level victimization rates. The prior literature generally has overlooked the possibility that high area-level victimization rates could be attributable not to a proliferation of repeat victims, but instead a small number of "supertargets" (more than 3 victimizations) whose incident counts are high enough to equal that of 10 or 20 normal repeat victims. The two scenarios have important differences for policy implications, particularly with the crime of burglary. Using three waves of the British Crime Survey, this study aims to determine whether high-crime areas are vulnerable due to frequent repeat victimization or less common (but more severe) "super-victimization". It is determined that both generating processes are common, and policing initiatives designed to reduce burglaries at the area-level should consider the area distribution's generating process before taking action.

Author

• Aaron Levin, University of Missouri - St. Louis