Sexual crime and place: The impact of the environmental context on sexual assault outcomes

• Place factors affect the offender’s behavior more than offense timing
• Time, place, and offender modus operandi strategies predict certain outcomes
• Rational decisions are made during the criminal event that lead to desired outcomes
• Whether the offender forces the victim to commit sexual acts depends more on the context
• Some outcomes are more dependent on the context than the offender and his actions

PurposeUsing the rational choice perspective, the current study investigates the impact that the environment and offending behavior have on serial sexual crime event outcomes.MethodsThe effects of time and place factors, as well as offender modus operandi strategies, on sexual crime event outcomes are tested using Generalized Estimating Equations on a sample of 361 crime events committed by 72 serial sex offenders.ResultsTime and place do impact serial stranger sexual offenders’ modus operandi strategies, but the place characteristics of the crime have more of an effect on the offender’s behavior than do the temporal conditions during which the event occurs. Subsequent analyses indicate that temporal and place factors, as well as offender modus operandi strategies, predict whether the offender completes the rape, his reaction to victim resistance, and the level of physical force that he inflicts on the victim, but not whether the victim is forced to commit sexual acts on the offender.ConclusionsSerial stranger sexual offenders are effective decision-makers who adapt their strategies to the physical environment in which they commit their crimes, but their degree of rationality can vary as some outcomes are more dependent on the context than the offender and his actions.