A Test of Time-constraint Predictions on Residence-to-Crime Distances among Sex Offenders

ABSTRACT

The finding that offenders tend to commit crime within relative proximity to their own residence has been well established in nearly 80 years of research. The usefulness of this area of research extends not only to the validation of environmental crime theories, but also offers to improve crime analysis capabilities, police investigative practice, and ultimately crime case clearances. Despite the considerable attention this area of study has received, much remains to be known about the factors which might influence variation in residence-to-crime (RTC) distances. One somewhat recently formalized idea is that offenders might be limited by the time that they have in which to commit crimes (such as by employment or family demands) and that this will constrict the geographic mobility of offenders as they operate within those time constraints. This study tested this time-constraint hypothesis on a sample of sex offense incidents (N = 157) from the state of New Jersey. Findings revealed limited support for the time-constraint thesis, before and after controlling for offender, situational and geographic characteristics. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Journey to crime
• residence to crime
• offender mobility
• sex offending
• geography of offending
• time constraint theory
• offender profiling
• geographic profiling

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. In this inaugural study, White found that rapists traveled 1.52 miles on average compared to 1.72 for property offenses. Almost eighty years later, this general finding remains valid.

2. We adopt Rossmo et al.’s (2004) specification of “residence-to-crime” (RTC) rather than “journey-to-crime” (JTC) as it more precisely describes the focus of study. RTC is a distinct focus within JTC research, the latter which also more generally includes examination of distances traveled by offenders and victims prior, during and after crime events.

3. For example, if there were three addresses and two of them were a park or of a business and only one is a residence, residential address was utilized. If all the addresses were residential, only one address was randomly selected.

4. United States Census Bureau website: https://www.census.gov/.

5. Integrated Public Use Microdata Series – National Historical Geographic Information System (IPUMS-NHGIS) website: https://www.nhgis.org/.

6. For instance, for cases that fell under 1950s – 1974 – the population estimate from 1970 census data was used; for case dates between 1975–1979, 1980 census data was used and for case dates between 1985– 1989, 1990 census data was used.

7. Victims were mostly female (74%; n = 125) with about one fourth being male (26%; n = 45). They were also typically young with 69% being minors (n = 114) and 31% (n = 52) adult. The average age of the victims was 15.