Burglary, Victimisation, and Social Deprivation

The spatial nature of repeat burglary victimisation has received research interest recently as it has been recognised that preventing repeat incidents can have a dramatic effect on crime rates. Much work has gone into the accurate identification of repeat events. While several researchers have noted the time course of repeat incidents, there has been little research that addresses the spatial variation in repeat incidents. In an attempt to explore and understand the differences between locations that are vulnerable to repeat attacks, and those sites that are victimised only once, this article uses an areally-weighted approach to measure the level of social deprivation in the immediate vicinity of burgled locations in South Nottinghamshire, UK. The paper shows that this approach is important in avoiding the distributional problems that can occur if point data is aggregated to enumeration district level. The two-year study shows that locations in deprived areas are more likely to be the victims of repeat burglaries than those in affluent areas. A number of hypotheses concerning this phenomenon are discussed.