Even criminals take a holiday: Instrumental and expressive crimes on major and minor holidays

Based on routine activity (RA) theory, the authors hypothesized that crime rates would vary with both the type of crime and the type of holiday, with violent crimes occurring more frequently and property crimes occurring less frequently on major holidays that brought families together in the home. It was also hypothesized that minor holidays would have little or no impact on crime rates. These hypotheses were tested by subjecting data on calls for service in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1985, 1987, and 1988 to time series analyses. After controlling for time of day, day of week, month, four weather variables, the first day of the month, linear trend, and autocorrelation, regression analyses indicated that both violent and property crimes were significantly related to major (or legal) holidays, whereas neither type of crime was more likely to occur on minor holidays. Crimes of expressive violence were significantly more prevalent on major holidays, whereas property crimes were less frequent on those days.

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