How Far to Victimization? Individual and Neighborhood Characteristics of "Residence-to-Crime" Distances

• In Event: Policing, Offenders, Victims, and the Spatial Distribution of Crime

Abstract

Routine activities theory asserts crime is the convergence of both a victim and offender. Risk of victimization shift as victims conduct their routines activities. The "journey to crime" literature reveals variation in distance offender's travel to their crime location based on the offense type, individual factors, and neighborhood characteristics. However, despite "fear of crime" victimization contributing to how individual's structure their daily mobility, less is understood about the "journey to crime" from the victim's perspective. The current study utilizes a novel open-source dataset to examine how crime type, individual factors, and neighborhood characteristics contribute to the "residence-to-crime" distance for victims in a single municipality. The current exploratory study explores how crime type, individual factors, neighborhood characteristics explain the variation on the "residence-to-crime" distance. The implications for how an individual's "fear of crime" informs their routine activity patterns based on these variations in "residence-to-crime" victimizations are discussed.

Authors

• Kevin Pedraza, University of California, Irvine

• Christopher J. Bates, University of California, Irvine