BITING ONCE, TWICE: THE INFLUENCE OF PRIOR ON SUBSEQUENT CRIME LOCATION CHOICE

• Author: BARBARA MENTING,WIM BERNASCO,MARRE LAMMERS,STIJN RUITER
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1745-9125.12071
• Date: 01 August 2015
• Published date: 01 August 2015

BITING ONCE, TWICE: THE INFLUENCE OF PRIOR ON

SUBSEQUENT CRIME LOCATION CHOICE∗

MARRE LAMMERS,1BARBARA MENTING,1STIJN RUITER,1,2

and WIM BERNASCO1,3

1Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement (NSCR)

2Department of Sociology, Utrecht University

3Department of Spatial Economics, VU University Amsterdam

KEYWORDS: crime location choice, discrete spatial choice modeling, offense history,

offender mobility, awareness space

Properties, victims, and locations previously targeted by offenders have an increased

risk of being targeted again within a short time period. It has been suggested that of-

ten the same offenders are involved in these repeated events and, thus, that offenders’

prior crime location choices influence their subsequent crime location choices. This ar-

ticle examines repeated crime location choices, testing the hypothesis that offenders are

more likely to commit a crime in an area they previously targeted than in areas they

did not target before. Unique data from four different data sources are used to study

the crime location choices of 3,666 offenders who committed 12,639 offenses. The re-

sults indicate that prior crime locations strongly influence subsequent crime location

choices. The effects of prior crime locations are larger if the crimes are frequent, if they

are recent, if they are nearby, and if they are the same type of crime.

Targets of crime have an increased risk of being targeted again. The risk typically re-

turns to its previctimization level over a couple of weeks or months (Farrell and Pease,

1993; Johnson, Bowers, and Hirschfield, 1997; Pease, 1998). When the same target is tar-

geted multiple times, it is often referred to as “repeat victimization.” It has been argued

that in most cases of repeat victimization, the same offender is responsible for both the

initial and the subsequent crime (Farrell, Phillips, and Pease, 1995). In the wake of a

crime, not only the initial target is characterized by an increased risk of victimization,

but also potential targets nearby the initial target are faced with a higher risk (Baudains,

Braithwaite, and Johnson, 2013; Bowers and Johnson, 2005; Townsley et al., 2014; Towns-

ley, Homel, and Chaseling, 2003). This “near-repeat victimization” has also been at-

tributed to the involvement of the same offenders in both the initial and subsequent

crimes (Johnson and Bowers, 2004; Townsley, Homel, and Chaseling, 2003).

∗We thank Astrid Patty and Peter Versteegh of The Hague Police Service for providing crime and

offender data. We thank lead editor Wayne Osgood and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful

feedback. The research leading to this study has received funding from the Netherlands Organi-

zation for Scientific Research under the Innovational Research Incentives Scheme Vidi [452–12–

004].We thank Jeffrey Brantingham for earlier comments on the article. Direct correspondence to

Marre Lammers, Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement, De Boele-

laan 1077a, 1081 HV Amsterdam, Netherlands (e-mail: MLammers@nscr.nl).

C2015 American Society of Criminology doi: 10.1111/1745-9125.12071

CRIMINOLOGY Volume 53 Number 3 309–329 2015 309

310 LAMMERS ET AL.

Empirical research has confirmed that multiple crimes committed in a short time span

against the same or a nearby target often involve the same offender (Bernasco, 2008;

Johnson, 2013; Johnson, Summers, and Pease, 2009). Changing the perspective from vic-

tims to offenders, this finding does suggest that prior crime location choices influence

subsequent crime location choices possibly because offenders’ experiences during prior

offenses teach them something about criminal opportunities, risks, and rewards that is

useful in the follow-up.

Although the research on repeat offending is widespread, systematic research on re-

peated crime location choices is nonexistent. All previous research on crime location

choice has ignored repeat offending. It has thus also ignored the possibility that offend-

ers’ current crime location choices could be affected by their prior crime location choices.

Previous studies either selected only a single crime per offender (e.g., Bernasco and

Nieuwbeerta, 2005) or they analyzed multiple crimes per offender as if they had been

committed by different individuals (e.g., Bernasco, 2010b; Bernasco and Block, 2009).

Ignoring prior crime locations could result in the incorrect attribution of their effects to

other causes. For example, the finding that offenders tend to commit crimes near areas

where they previously lived (Bernasco, 2010b) might be mediated by prior crime loca-

tions. Maybe they only return to locations near their past homes because that is where

they offended before.

In this study, repeated crime location choice is examined, taking different crime types

into account. The main hypothesis being tested is that offenders are more likely to commit

crimes in areas where they offended before than in areas not previously targeted. To

test this hypothesis, we studied repeated crime location choices of 3,666 offenders who

lived in the greater The Hague area, the Netherlands, and for whom at least one offense

had been recorded by the police in this area between 2006 and 2009 and at least one

offense within the 3 years prior to the 2006–2009 offense(s). This study contributes two

key innovations to the literature. First, we theorize the effects of prior crime locations.

This approach moves us beyond the hypothesis that prior crime locations matter and

allows us to formulate and test additional hypotheses on the effects of frequency and

recency of prior location choices, on the effects of proximity to prior crime locations,

and on location choice consistency across different types of crime. Second, we tease out

the extent to which prior crime location choices affect subsequent crime location choices

while taking into account alternative explanations including the locations of current and

former homes and other differences between areas.

This article is organized as follows: First, studies on same offender involvement in

(near-) repeat crimes are discussed, followed by a theoretical explanation of why offend-

ers would target the same area multiple times. The hypotheses are then formulated, fol-

lowed by sections that present the data and methods used. Subsequently, the results of

the study are presented. Finally, we reflect on the findings, discuss caveats, and explore

avenues for future research.

SAME OFFENDER INVOLVEMENT IN (NEAR-) REPEAT

VICTIMIZATION

Research has shown that repeat victimization is prevalent (e.g., Johnson, Bowers,

and Hirschfield, 1997; Pease, 1998) and so is near-repeat victimization (Bowers and

Johnson, 2004; Morgan, 2001; Townsley, Homel, and Chaseling, 2003). Farrell, Phillips,