Repeat Burglary Victimisation: Spatial and Temporal Patterns

Abstract

To date there has been little Australian research on repeat victimisation. This is a study of repeat burglary in an area of Brisbane using police calls for service data. We demonstrate: (a) the prevalence of residential repeat victim addresses (‘hot dot’) is of a similar magnitude to that found in studies in the United Kingdom; (b) the time distributions of revictimisation are identical with those found in studies in the UK and elsewhere; (c) ‘hot spots’ (small areas with high crime density) can be identified by statistical analyses of spatial concentrations of incidents; (d) unstable hot spots tend to be temporary aggregations of hot dots, whereas stable hot spots seem to reflect more the social and physical characteristics of certain localities; and (e) the overall incidence of burglary could be reduced by at least 25 per cent if all repeat victimisation could be eliminated. There are a number of areas where concepts and techniques for repeat victim research could potentially be strengthened: (a) clarifying the connections between hot dots and hot spots, particularly through exploration of the concept of a ‘near repeat address’; (b) applying survival analysis to the data on the time periods between victimisations; and (c) using moving average techniques to examine changes in the spatial distributions of burglary over time.