Repeat burglary victimisation: a tale of two theories

Research consistently demonstrates that crime is spatially concentrated. Considering repeat burglary, studies conducted across a variety of countries and for different periods of time demonstrate that events also cluster in time. Two theories have been proposed to explain patterns of repeat victimisation. The first suggests that repeat victimisation is the consequence of a contagion-like process. If a home has been burgled on one occasion, the risk to the home is boosted, most likely because offenders will return to exploit good opportunities further (e.g. to steal replaced items or those left behind). In contrast, the second suggests that repeat victimisation may be explained by time-stable variation in risk across homes and a chance process. Different offenders independently target attractive locations for which risk is flagged. Understanding the contribution of the two explanations is important for both criminological understanding and crime reduction. Hitherto, research concerned with repeat victimisation has adopted a top-down methodology, analysing either victimisation or offender data. In this paper, results are reported for a simple micro-simulation experiment used to examine patterns of victimisation under conditions where the contributions of both theoretical mechanisms are varied. The findings suggest that increasing the heterogeneity of target attractiveness can generate spatial concentrations of crime not dissimilar to those discussed above, but that a contagion-like process is (also) required to generate the time course of repeat victimisation. The implications of the findings are discussed.