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Spatial and environmental consistency in serial sexual assault

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posted on 2023-08-30, 13:39 authored by Samantha Lundrigan, Sarah Czarnomski, Marc Wilson
This study examines the crime patterns of 76 New Zealand serial sexual offenders in order to determine the extent to which offenders display locational consistency in their choice of crime locations. More specifically, the hypothesis was that there would be intraseries consistency in the distances travelled (spatial consistency) and the characteristics of the crime sites selected (environmental consistency) by serial sexual offenders. For spatial consistency to be tested, the distances travelled from home to offend and the criminal range for each offence series were analysed. Support was found for spatial consistency, and, in line with much overseas research, it was also found that the offenders typically did not travel very far from home to offend (median distance of 3 km). The environmental consistency measure was made up of various physical, temporal, and contextual variables that described the environmental characteristics of an offence. As hypothesised, it was found that offenders displayed intraseries environmental consistency in offence site selection beyond the level of that expected by chance. The implications of this both for understanding offender spatial decision making and for geographical profiling are discussed. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

History

Refereed

  • Yes

Volume

7

Issue number

1

Page range

15-30

Publication title

Journal of Investigative Psychology and Offender Profiling

ISSN

1544-4767

Publisher

Wiley

File version

  • Accepted version

Language

  • eng

Legacy posted date

2012-04-26

Legacy creation date

2018-05-04

Legacy Faculty/School/Department

ARCHIVED Faculty of Arts, Law & Social Sciences (until September 2018)

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