Travelling Criminals

It is commonly assumed that greater mobility in contemporary society has led to offenders travelling longer distances to commit crime, particularly in affluent rural areas.

The report The Road to Nowhere: the evidence for travelling criminals’ Home Office Research Study 207 by Paul Wiles and Andrew Costello examines offender’s travel-to-crime patterns using a geographical information system to explore offender and victim mobility in relation to burglary and car crime. http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/hors207.pdf

The most important finding from the research is that most offenders tend to commit crime in areas local to where they live or spend their leisure time.

The evidence for this came from police recorded crime data, confirmed by data collected in interviews with convicted offenders and an analysis of the Forensic Science Service DNA database.

The fact that this finding was evident in the recorded crime data highlights the value of analysing readily available data that is routinely collected by the police. This can be used for crime pattern analysis purposes and for the strategic management of high volume crime.

It is often assumed that because travel has become much easier, then offenders must be taking advantage of this fact and travelling further to commit their crimes. There is a widely held view that a considerable amount of high volume crime is committed by travelling, often urban offenders taking advantage of increasingly easy mobility.

The report examines these beliefs and attempts to identify the extent to which there is evidence to support them

In addition, the researchers interviewed a sample of offenders about their travels to crime. The research mainly focuses on volume crime, which for this purpose was defined as burglary and vehicle crime

The main findings are:

• the vast majority of offender movements are relatively short;

• much travel associated with crime is not primarily driven by plans to offend but appears to be much more dependent upon opportunities presenting themselves during normal routines;

• when offenders do travel to offend it is overwhelmingly local in nature (less than three miles) and even when longer-range travel is involved in offending elsewhere this is mainly in places which have strong traditional connections with the offender’s home location.

• there was little evidence that offender’s travelling to offend was significantly increasing compared with the past or that new travel opportunities were changing traditional travel patterns used by offenders.

Whilst these findings were confirmed by interview data with offenders, the general patterns could all be identified from police recorded crime data. In fact, if anything, police data tends to overestimate travel. Although previous analysis of DNA data has identified significant cross border offender movements this does not necessarily involve much travel by offenders. Forces that abut metropolitan areas are likely to have offender movements into their areas and more rural forces with tourist sites will have some longer travel offenders.

The report concludes by examining the relationship between offenders’ travel to offend and victims’ travel to victimisation, and how this might be analysed as part of crime pattern analysis and used for the strategic management of crime.