Deconstructing journey-to-crime's questionable validity in theft-related crimes

Abstract

PurposeThis study empirically quantifies the methodological biases of the journey-to-crime measurement, by investigating the extent to which they affect its ability to estimate the itineraries offenders actually travel during the perpetration of their crimes. MethodsWith the support of police-arrest records, interviews, and web-mapping technologies, the detailed route taken by 98 offenders during 449 theft-related crimes are reconstructed in order to test some of the key assumptions underlying journey-to-crime research. ResultsPolice data used to compute home-crime distances have been found to provide satisfactorily accurate crime-location addresses, but poorly accurate offender home-addresses. Several explanations of why the police have problems correctly identifying where an offender is truly residing on the day of a given crime are presented. Even if the offender's residence was the most important node in their crime journey, the actual travel undertaken by offenders was much more complex than the home-crime-home itinerary assumed by the journey-to-crime measurement. ConclusionsDespite its numerous drawbacks, the traditional journey-to-crime measure is still a valid and useful proxy for the total distance actually traveled by offenders in robbery and “other theft,” but not in burglary and motor-vehicle theft. Implications for criminal mobility research and future studies are discussed.