NCJ Number
79566
Date Published
1980
Length
6 pages
Annotation
This review assesses Donald Capone's and Woodrow Nichols' study designed to describe the distance biases of robbery offenders in metropolitan Miami, Fla., and explain such biases.
Abstract
The study examined robbery trips for cleared robberies in metropolitan Miami in 1971. The relationship between trip frequency and distance was investigated using armed versus unarmed robbery and open-space versus fixed-space robbery as independent variables. Theoretical functions were fitted to the observed distance frequency data, and degree of fit was determined by the Kolmogorov-Smirnoff test. The data described 825 robbery trips, representing 642 cleared robberies. The study concluded that the movement behavior of robbers varies in distance traveled from offender's residence to offense location according to whether the robber is armed or unarmed and whether the robbery occurred in open space or a fixed premise. Criminal movement behavior is concluded to be the product of a rational, spatial, decisionmaking process that involves evaluation of an objective urban opportunity structure, the differential attractiveness of particular elements of the structure, and the universal constraint of distance. The conclusions regarding factors affecting distance traveled is supported by the data, but the conclusion about the robber's decisionmaking process is overdrawn. A test using only cleared cases is not sufficient to provide strong support for the conclusions. Further, the inappropriate use of the Kolmogorov-Smirnoff Test compromises the findings. For the original report, see NCJ 42922. (Author summary modified)