Moving to Crime Opportunity

ObjectivesResearch has established that offenders are often generalists who commit a wide range of criminal offense types.Theoretical approaches to offending variety generally take a longitudinal perspective that tracks the variety of crimes committed over the life-course.Less theoretical work has been done at the microscopic scale of daily routines, though this is the scale at which individuals ultimately encounter and exploit criminal opportunities. MethodsThis paper develops a neutral model that links fine-grained offender mobility patterns in heterogeneous crime environments to offending variety.Offender mobility is modeled as Brownian motion originating from central anchor point.Crime opportunities are exploited upon encounter in a simple random fashion. ResultsThe model shows mechanistically how offenders with higher mobility and/or environments with greater spatial overlap in distinct crime opportunities can display greater offending variety. ConclusionsThe model provides a neutral baseline for evaluating the relationship between day-to-day mobility, crime environments, and offending variety.The relationship displays distinctive mathematical regularities that can serve as a foundation for further theoretical development.