Predicting offender home location in urban burglary series.
Residential location of a criminal can be predicted statistically [M. Laukkanen, P. Santtila, Predicting the home location of a serial commercial robber, Forensic Sci. Int. 157 (2006) 71-82]. Examined were: accuracy of the technique for urban burglary series, correlations between way of committing burglary and distance and use of those correlations in enhancing prediction accuracy.


METHODS
78 residential burglary series from Greater Helsinki area, Finland. Series for which the home location prediction was made was never part of the predicting model. Distances between home and crime-site were short (Mdn 3.88km; IQR=1.16-10.10km). Search area of a perpetrator could be limited to 1.95% (Mdn, IQR=0.64-18.70%) of the total study area. For series which conformed to Circle Hypothesis (45%), search area was 0.84% (Mdn, IQR=0.51-2.34%). Correlations between crime features and distance were found to enhance accuracy when features of series hinted short distance: sub-model limited search area to 0.19% (Mdn, IQR=0.07-0.65%).
Laukkanen
Manne
M
Abo Akademi University, Department of Psychology, Domkyrkotorget 3, 20500 Abo, Finland. manne.laukkanen@sci.fi
Santtila
Pekka
P
Jern
Patrick
P
Sandnabba
Kenneth
K
D003415:Crime; D003417:Criminal Psychology; D003627:Data Interpretation, Statistical; D005387:Finland; D005554:Forensic Medicine / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D012111:Residence Characteristics; D012984:Software; D014505:Urban Population