Commuting for crime

Kirchmaier, Thomas ORCID: 0000-0002-8938-2206, Langella, Monica ORCID: 0000-0001-7711-416X and Manning, Alan ORCID: 0000-0002-7884-3580 (2024) Commuting for crime. The Economic Journal, 134 (659). 1173–1198. ISSN 0013-0133

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Abstract

People care about crime, with the spatial distribution of both actual and perceived crime affecting the amenities from living in different areas and residential decisions. The literature finds that crime tends to happen close to the offender’s residence but does not clearly establish whether this is because the location of likely offenders and crime opportunities are close to each other, whether more local crimes are likely to be solved or whether there is a high commuting cost for criminals. We use a rich administrative dataset from one of the biggest UK police forces to disentangle these hypotheses proposing a procedure for controlling for the selection bias induced by the fact that offenders’ location is only known when they are caught. We find that the cost of distance is very high, especially for crimes without any financial gain. For property crimes, we find a similar cost of distance to commuting for legal work. We also investigate how local socio-economic characteristics affect both the number of criminals and crimes.

Item Type:	Article
Official URL:	https://academic.oup.com/ej
Additional Information:	© 2023 The Authors
Divisions:	Centre for Economic Performance Economics
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HV Social pathology. Social and public welfare. Criminology
Date Deposited:	19 Oct 2023 07:39
Last Modified:	17 Oct 2024 16:19
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/120498

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