Examining Juvenile Delinquency within Activity Space: Building a Context for Offender Travel Patterns

Abstract

Researchers modeling offender travel patterns typically assume that crime locations are well within the offenders’ activity space. Using information about the places frequented by 2,563 delinquent youths residing in Southern California, this study examined distances traveled to delinquent and nondelinquent hangout locations. Travel to known delinquent sites was substantively farther from home than expected and exhibited a segmented nonlinear curve, joining logarithmic and negative exponential functions. Significant variation was found for place-specific (trip distance) and person-specific (individual travel) distances by city classification, travel method, and age cohort; age effects disappeared in multivariate analyses. Several implications follow, highlighting the need to infuse a place-oriented approach to studying journey-to-crime.