Offender Mobility and Crime Pattern Formation from First Principles

Abstract

Criminal opportunity in most cases is constrained by the fact that motivated offenders and potential targets or victims are not found at the same place at the same time. This ecological fact necessitates that offenders, potential victims, or both move into spatial positions that make crimes physically possible. This chapter develops a series of simple mathematical and agent-based models looking at the relationship between basic movement decisions and emergent crime patterns in two-dimensional environments. It is shown that there may be substantial regularities to crime patterns, including the tendency for crime to form discrete hotspots that arise solely from different movement strategies deployed by offenders.