Urban planning and residential burglary outcomes

https://doi.org/10.1016/0169-2046(93)90015-6Get rights and content

Abstract

Crime disorder, and fear can erode the hearts of neighborhoods and cities and undo the best efforts of planners, but planners typically have not made crime central to their concerns. This paper examines the crime of burglary, which may appear to be benign relative to the more violent forms of crime in the United States, but in its consequences for victims can be quite severe. Since burglars use features of the environment to increase their payoffs while reducing their risks, planners can help to thwart them. The burglary process unfolds in phases, and can be interrupted by the offender at any point at which the information available to the burglar at that point does not satisfy his criteria as to the ratio of risk versus reward. The research reported on here examines the phase where the burglar has already selected a house as a target and has begun the attempt to enter it. Whether the burglary is completed or aborted was found to be associated with neighborhood disorganization and home occupancy; other factors assumed to be important at this phase of the process, such as burglar alarms, extra locks on doors, etc., did not prove to be so. Neighborhood disorganization and home occupancy are both sensitive to programs and variables influenced by planners. Through trying to understand and control burglary, planners can develop approaches that will enable them to help deal with other forms of crime as well.

References (24)

  • A. Agresti

    Categorical Data Analysis

    (1990)
  • A. Biderman et al.

    Recency bias in data on self-reported victimization

  • P.J. Brantingham et al.

    A theoretical model of crime site selection

  • Bureau of Justice Statistics

    Report to the Nation on Crime and Justice

    (1988)
  • Bureau Van Dijk

    Woninginbraak

    (1991)
  • P. Cromwell et al.

    Breaking and Entering: An Ethnographic Analysis of Burglary

    (1991)
  • J. Garofalo et al.

    Guardianship and residential burglary

    Justice Q.

    (1992)
  • L. Goodman

    A modified multiple regression approach to the analysis of dichotomous variables

    Am. Sociol. Rev.

    (1972)
  • S. Hakim et al.

    Residential Security: The Hakim-Buck Study on Suburban Alarm Effevtiveness

    (1991)
  • M. Hough

    Residential burglary: A profile for the British Crime Survey

  • M. Hough et al.

    If at first you don't succeed: BCS findings on attempted burglaries

  • D. Knoke et al.

    Log-Linear Models

    (1980)
  • Cited by (18)

    • Do all commercial land uses deteriorate neighborhood safety?: Examining the relationship between commercial land-use mix and residential burglary

      2016, Habitat International
      Citation Excerpt :

      It is hypothesized in this study that different facilities may have varying effects on crime and that not all commercial businesses may negatively affect neighborhood safety. By analyzing incidents of residential burglary, which has been reported as one of the most common types of offense influenced by the built environment (DeFrances & Titus, 1993; Yang, 2006), this study seeks to propose implications for land-use strategies to improve neighborhood safety. To identify an accurate spatial distribution of crime, the measure of crime density based on a standardized spatial unit of analysis is used in the analysis.

    • Using remote sensing to assess the relationship between crime and the urban layout

      2014, Applied Geography
      Citation Excerpt :

      Similar ideas support planning approaches that seek to deter criminal behavior by designing ordered, highly visible and easily defensible urban spaces, such as crime prevention through environmental design (CPTED), and New Urbanism (Cozens, 2008). DeFrances and Titus (1993) found that whether a burglary was completed or aborted was associated with neighborhood disorganization and home occupancy, and Keizer, Lindenberg, and Steg (2008) tested the broken windows theory in six field experiments and reported that when people observe that others have violated certain social norms or legitimate rules, they are more likely to violate other norms and rules, causing disorder to spread and escalate. Previous research addressed the relationships between crime in urban settings and physical and environmental variables such as altitude and slope (Breetzke, 2012), temperature and weather conditions (Anderson & Anderson, 1984; Butke & Sheridan, 2010; Carlsmith & Anderson, 1979; Cohn & Rotton, 2000; DeFronzo, 1984; Field, 1992; Salleh et al., 2012; Sorg & Taylor, 2011), vegetation (Donovan & Prestemon, 2012; Kuo & Sullivan, 2001; Troy, Grove, & O'Neil-Dunne, 2012; Wolfe & Mennis, 2012), land use (Kurtz, Koons, & Taylor, 1998; Wilcox, Quisenberry, Cabrera, & Jones, 2004), nighttime lighting (Weeks, 2003), and the spatial pattern of the built environment (Browning et al., 2010; Foster, Giles-Corti, & Knuiman, 2010; Shu & Huang, 2003; Taylor & Harrell, 1996, p. 32).

    • "Safe Going": The influence of crime rates and perceived crime and safety on walking in deprived neighbourhoods

      2013, Social Science and Medicine
      Citation Excerpt :

      However, many aspects of the built and social environments are known to facilitate PA (Saelens & Handy, 2008), and some of these may serve both policy aims, whatever the primary reason for their implementation. For example, in different settings, the presence of incivilities has been linked to increased burglary (De Frances & Titus, 1993) and greater feelings of insecurity (Wood, 2004), and may deter residents from doing PA (Shenassa et al., 2006). Thus, in new neighbourhoods, PA benefits may accrue directly and indirectly by the provision and maintenance of environments that are safer from crime.

    • The built environment, neighborhood crime and constrained physical activity: An exploration of inconsistent findings

      2008, Preventive Medicine
      Citation Excerpt :

      Other elements of the physical environment provide negative visual cues that potentially amplify residents' perceptions of crime and heighten fears. The presence of physical disorder or “incivilities” (e.g., vandalism, litter, graffiti) (Skogan and Maxfield, 1981) is associated with increased burglary (DeFrances and Titus, 1993), greater perceived crime and fear of crime (Lewis and Maxfield, 1980), even when reported crimes are low (Sooman and Macintyre, 1995). Moreover, when incivilities are not remedied quickly, residents may interpret neighborhood decline as being worse than it really is (Skogan, 1990).

    View all citing articles on Scopus
    View full text