Citation

Hewitt AN. J. Police Crim. Psychol. 2021; 36(4): 729-742.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2021, Holtzbrinck Springer Nature Publishing Group)

DOI

10.1007/s11896-021-09481-8

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The crime and place literature has consistently emphasized the importance of understanding spatial patterns of crime using increasingly smaller spatial units of analysis. Despite the growing number of studies that have used this perspective, very few of them have investigated sexual offenses specifically. The current study uses police event data to investigate the spatial distribution of sexual offenses that occurred between January 1, 2016 and December 31, 2018 in Austin, Texas (N = 1381). Disaggregating offenses first by victim age (child versus adult) and then type of sexual act perpetrated (penetration, sexual contact, and sexual non-contact offenses), three measures of spatial clustering, kernel density analyses, and a spatial point pattern test are used.

FINDINGS indicate that sexual offenses perpetrated against children and adults are spatially concentrated, but the degree to which they cluster depends upon the type of sexual act committed. Furthermore, within each of these victim profiles, spatial point pattern findings suggest that the street segments (and intersections) affected by sexual crime differ according to the nature of the sexual act committed. Implications for situational crime prevention and policing are discussed.

Language: en