Article

Crime Prevention and Community Safety (2008) 10, 85–96. doi:10.1057/palgrave.cpcs.8150062

Modelling Crime Flow between Neighbourhoods in Terms of Distance and of Intervening Opportunities

Richard Block was spending a sabbatical at NSCR when cooperating on this project.

Henk Elffersa, Danielle Reynalda, Margit Averdijka, Wim Bernascoa and Richard Blockb

  1. aThe Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement NSCR, Leiden, the Netherlands
  2. bLoyola University Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA

Correspondence: Henk Elffers, Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement, NSCR, Postbus 792, Leiden, NL 2300 AT, The Netherlands. E-mail: HElffers@nscr.nl

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Abstract

Using data on solved crimes in The Hague, the Netherlands, we study crime trips between areas where offenders live and where they offend, in order to test the hypothesis that the number of criminal opportunities between two areas ("intervening opportunities") influences the number of crime trips that take place between those areas. The findings are that, contrary to the hypothesis, simple geographical distance between two areas explains the number of crime trips between them better than various measures of intervening opportunities do.

Keywords:

intervening opportunities, crime trips, gravitational models