The Burglary Boost: A Note on Detecting Contagion Using the Knox Test

Abstract

Objectives A large body of literature in quantitative criminology finds that the spatio-temporal clustering of burglary is greater than one would expect from chance alone. This suggests that such crimes may exhibit a “boost” effect, wherein each burglary increases the risk to nearby locations for a short period. In this study, we demonstrate that standard tests for spatio-temporal dependence have difficulty distinguishing between clustering caused by contagion and that caused by changing relative risks. Therefore, any estimates of the boost effect drawn from these tests alone will be upwardly biased.