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. Data: 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 3.88 km; IQR = 1.16–10.10 km). 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%).