Temporal Cycles of Sexual Violence: An Examination of Intra-week Patterns and their Variability

• In Event: Poster Session II

Abstract

Past research investigating the temporal patterns of sexual violence has largely done so at the most aggregate temporal levels (i.e., seasonal and monthly), and has found that this type of crime peaks during the summer season and warmer months of the year when, from a routine activities perspective, people are most likely to come into contact with one another. However, less is known about the intra-week temporal patterns of crime more generally, and specifically for sexual violence. The current study utilizes the Police Information Retrieval System – a police database used by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police – to analyze the temporal distribution of 2, 260 sexual assaults that occurred between August 1, 2002 to July 31, 2006 within a large Western Canadian city. Circular statistics (Rayleigh’s Z and Watson’s U2) are first used to test for the daily and hourly patterns of sexual violence, and their consistency over time. Findings indicate that this type of crime consistently peaks mid-week and mid-day. Negative binomial regression analyses are then performed with trend, weather, and illumination variables to try to better understand this variability. Theoretical and practical implications are then discussed.

Authors

• Ashley Nicole Hewitt, Simon Fraser University

• Martin A Andresen, Simon Fraser University

• Eric Beauregard, Simon Fraser University

• P Brantingham, Simon Fraser University