Are DNA data a valid source to study the spatial behavior of unknown offenders?

Studying the spatial behaviour of unknown offenders (i.e. undetected offenders) is difficult, because police recorded crime data do not contain information about these offenders. Recently, forensic DNA data has been used to study unknown offenders. However, DNA data are only a subset of the crimes committed by unknown offenders stored in police recorded crime data. To establish the suitability of DNA data for studying the spatial offending behaviour of unknown offenders, we examine the concentration and spatial similarity of detected but unsolved crimes in police recorded crime data (N = 181,483) and DNA data (N = 1913) over 27 Belgian judicial districts for four crime types. We established spatial similarity for certain crime types (in some districts). This offers opportunities for DNA data to be used to study unknown offenders' spatial offending behaviour. Implications for theory and research are discussed.

[1]  Wouter Steenbeek,et al.  The (In)Stability of Residential Burglary Patterns on Street Segments: The Case of Antwerp, Belgium 2005–2016 , 2019 .

[2]  Martin A. Andresen,et al.  Testing the Stability of Crime Patterns: Implications for Theory and Policy , 2011 .

[3]  Paul Wiles,et al.  The 'road to nowhere': the evidence for travelling criminals , 2000 .

[4]  Martin A. Andresen.  An area-based nonparametric spatial point pattern test: The test, its applications, and the future , 2016 .

[5]  Matthieu de Castelbajac.  Brooding Over the Dark Figure of Crime The Home Office and the Cambridge Institute of Criminology in the Run-Up to the British Crime Survey , 2014 .

[6]  O. Ribaux,et al.  Intelligence-led crime scene processing. Part II: Intelligence and crime scene examination. , 2010, Forensic Science International.

[7]  Wim Bernasco,et al.  Are mobile offenders less likely to be caught? The influence of the geographical dispersion of serial offenders’ crime locations on their probability of arrest , 2013 .

[8]  M. Lammers,et al.  Are Arrested and Non-Arrested Serial Offenders Different? A Test of Spatial Offending Patterns Using DNA Found at Crime Scenes , 2014 .

[9]  Patrick Jeuniaux,et al.  Managing forensic DNA records in a divided world: the Belgian case , 2015 .

[10]  Martin A. Andresen,et al.  Crime concentrations and similarities in spatial crime patterns in a Brazilian context , 2015 .

[11]  Martin A. Andresen,et al.  Crime at Places and Spatial Concentrations: Exploring the Spatial Stability of Property Crime in Vancouver BC, 2003–2013 , 2016, Journal of Quantitative Criminology.

[12]  Martin A. Andresen,et al.  The (in)appropriateness of aggregating across crime types , 2012 .

[13]  Elizabeth R. Groff,et al.  The Concentration and Stability of Drug Activity in Seattle, Washington Using Police and Emergency Medical Services Data , 2017 .

[14]  Andrew Palmer Wheeler,et al.  Testing for similarity in area‐based spatial patterns: Alternative methods to Andresen's spatial point pattern test , 2018, Trans. GIS.

[15]  Jerry H. Ratcliffe,et al.  The spatial dependency of crime increase dispersion , 2010 .

[16]  Wouter Steenbeek,et al.  More Places than Crimes: Implications for Evaluating the Law of Crime Concentration at Place , 2017 .

[17]  David B. Wilson,et al.  Use of DNA Testing in Police Investigative Work for Increasing Offender Identification, Arrest, Conviction, and Case Clearance: A Systematic Review , 2011 .

[18]  John E. Eck,et al.  Compared to what? Estimating the relative concentration of crime at places using systematic and other reviews , 2017, Crime Science.

[19]  A. Reiss,.  Co-Offending and Criminal Careers , 1988, Crime and Justice.

[20]  R. Ruback,et al.  The Relationship Between Co-Offending, Age, and Experience Using a Sample of Adult Burglary Offenders , 2017 .

[21]  M. Lammers.  Catch me if you can: Using DNA traces to study the influence of offending behaviour on the probability of arrest , 2014 .

[22]  Nick Tilley,et al.  Forensic science in UK policing: strategies, tactics and effectiveness , 2009 .

[23]  Martin A. Andresen.  Testing for similarity in area-based spatial patterns: A nonparametric Monte Carlo approach , 2009 .

[24]  Michael Hoy,et al.  Making Inequality Comparisons When Lorenz Curves Intersect , 1995 .

[25]  Shane D. Johnson,et al.  UK open source crime data: accuracy and possibilities for research , 2015 .

[26]  John Eck,et al.  Crime Places in Crime Theory , 2015 .