Geographic Mobility and Criminal Behavior

Abstract

A structural model portraying the processes through which geographic mobility presumably affects individual criminal behavior is derived by amalgamating twelve theoretical statements from the literature. The model is then estimated using self-report data from a three-state survey, focusing on four self-projected offenses and change in residence over a ten-year period. The results show no direct influences of mobility but they do indicate the presence of a fairly general indirect effect through the intervening linkage of moral commitment to conventional norms. Thus, in general, mobility appears to reduce moral commitments that, in turn, increase the chances of offense. Yet the discovery of an inverse effect of mobility on the offense of marijuana smoking suggests that the effects of mobility may vary somewhat by type of offense under consideration. We conclude that the mobility/crime linkage merits further attention, especially in an effort to build more specific and conditional theory.