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Most burglaries are property offenses yet some offenders perpetrate burglary for the purpose of violent instrumental crimes. Sexual burglars are distinct from non-sexual burglars because the former seek to rape or sexually abuse victims within the homes they burgle whereas the latter seek theft and material gain. It is unclear to what degree burglars who are armed with firearms or knives represent a type of sexual burglar, or perhaps a more severe type of offender who enters homes not merely to rape a victim, but to perhaps murder them as well. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Drawing on data from 790 felons in Florida, t-test and negative binomial regression models were used to compare armed burglars to offenders who were not convicted of armed burglary.

Compared to offenders not convicted of armed burglary, armed burglars were involved in significantly more instrumental crimes of violence including first-degree murder, kidnapping, armed rape, armed robbery and assault with intent to murder. Armed burglary may be a marker of extreme instrumental violent offending and warrants further study.

To the authors’ knowledge, this is among the first studies of armed burglary offenders and adds understanding to the heterogeneity of burglary offenders and their criminal careers.

The purpose of this paper is to gain insight into the content, format and evaluation of printed public communication from police officers and governments regarding home burglary prevention in Belgium.

The content and format in this paper is analyzed through content analysis of 104 printed communication pieces in the Belgian province of Flemish‐Brabant in 2005. The evaluation is analyzed through five focus group interviews among professionals and common citizens.

The paper finds that police zones significantly differ in terms of communication efforts. The media mix is not diverse with poor collaboration between police officers and government information officers, while intermediaries (i.e. architects) are rarely used, culminating in poor targeted communication.

The paper shows that only printed communication is analyzed and more large‐scale empirical research is desired.

The paper shows that a richer media mix, more targeted communication, more national communication support and additional dialogue between and training of police officers and communication with professionals are advisable.

This paper combines two empirical studies and methods (content analysis and focus group interviews), resulting in a series of recommendations for further inquiry and future action.

Although many studies have examined the correlates of homicide clearance rates, few analyses have examined the factors related to the clearance of burglary offenses. The purpose of this paper is to address several gaps in the literature to determine if burglary clearance rates are due to discretionary, non-discretionary, and/or neighborhood contextual factors.

Data are analyzed from more than 10,000 burglary incidents in Philadelphia from 2010 using multilevel models to simultaneously test for the influence of multiple perspectives of the factors of crime clearance.

The results indicate that variables representing broken windows enforcement, discretionary factors, and non-discretionary factors are related to the increased likelihood that burglaries are cleared, but processes associated with social disorganization within communities is not.

The findings contribute to the literature by showing that future examinations of the factors of burglary clearance should consider community contextual factors, and specifically, that broken windows police enforcement appears to be a more important predictor of burglary clearance than do factors related to social disorganization theory. As a result, it is suggested that law enforcement also consider their tactics regarding low-level offenses if they wish to address the clearance rate of burglaries.

This analysis is among the first to examine multiple perspectives of the factors of crime clearance on burglary incidents.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the extent and variation in the estimates to which crime can be prevented using patterns of repeats and near repeats, and whether hotspot analysis complements these patterns.

Crime data for four study areas in New Zealand are used to examine differences in the extent of burglary repeat and near repeat victimisation. Hotspots of burglary are also created to determine the extent to which burglary repeats and near repeats spatially intersect hotspots.

The extent of repeats and near repeats varies, meaning there is variation in the estimated prevention benefits that repeat and near repeat patterns offer. In addition, at least half of the burglaries repeats and near repeats were not located within hotspots.

The use of other techniques for examining crime concentration could be used to improve the research observations.

By showing that levels of repeats and near repeats vary, the extent to which these observations coincide in hotspots offers practitioners a better means of determining whether repeat and near repeat patterns are reliable for informing crime prediction and crime prevention activities.

The paper is the first known research study that explicitly measures the variation in the extent of repeats and near repeats and the spatial intersection of these patterns within crime hotspots. The results suggest that rather than considering the use of repeat and near repeat patterns as a superior method for predicting and preventing crime, value remains in using hotspot analysis for determining where crime is likely to occur, particularly when hotspot analysis emphasises other locations for resource targeting.

The purpose of this paper is to make evidence-based recommendations for improving the responses of criminal justice agencies to juvenile burglary offenders.

The paper first analyzes what is known about factors relevant to young offenders’ initiation into burglary and subsequent persistence in that offense. It then evaluates research regarding juvenile justice interventions that can mitigate those factors in order to prevent youth from becoming involved in burglary or to encourage desistance in juvenile burglars.

Effective early intervention with juvenile burglars is vital, as burglars often begin committing this crime in their early teens and quickly develop expertise in the offense. Evidence supports the importance of positive mentoring, substance abuse programs, some forms of restorative justice and multi-modal interventions with education and employment components, while waiving these youth to adult court appears to offer little benefit over less punitive approaches.

This work delivers an original contribution by providing an analysis of existing burglary and juvenile justice research that may be useful to policymakers, law enforcement and other justice practitioners.

To assess whether a programme of “crackdown and consolidation” could lead to measurable and sustainable reductions in domestic burglary.

In 1998 the Home Office reducing burglary initiative was launched in England and Wales. Phase I comprised 63 projects; the evaluation of one such project based on crackdown and consolidation is considered here. The aim was to crack down on known burglary recidivists, and then consolidate any gains by engaging the local community and implementing various prevention measures. The article considers the background to the project, the history of the method and how it was applied in this instance. The plausibility of the view that this action led to reductions in offending is examined.

The project did not follow its original plan of a continuous cycle of crackdown and consolidation. However, the approach undoubtedly has the potential to work, although in this instance the consolidation served only to prolong the impact of the initial crackdown, rather than offer a sustainable solution.

There are financial and staffing implications of adopting a cycle of crackdown and consolidation. There also needs to be neighbourhood buy‐in – especially for the crackdown element – and early warning of changes in the burglary trend.

Whilst the concept of crackdown and consolidation has existed for some years, published accounts of it are limited. This article goes some way towards filling that gap by providing an evaluation of the method within an operational police setting.

Reports on a survey of burglary victims in Hungary, focusing on both their experiences of the crime and their perceptions of the way the police handled the incident. Using police records as a sampling frame, interviews were conducted with 207 victims in Miskolc, one of the largest cities in the country. The impact of the burglaries on victims was considerable. However help from specialist agencies were negligable among our sample. The extent to which the “new” police provide a service to crime victims is thus doubly important. Analysis suggested that victims were generally positive towards the police, felt police services had improved in recent years, and saw the police as relatively sympathetic towards victims. Victims were considerably more positive in their evaluations than were similar victims in Poland. The reasons for this are unclear but may be related to both police‐related differences and wider differences, such as whether or not victims are insured. What is clear, though, is that marked contrasts are emerging between different countries in transition, and these need to be further assessed in future research.

This article sets out a simple predictive model for calculating the incidence of burglary in dwelling houses. The consequences of planned housing development are also estimated. It is argued that existing Home Office crime reduction targets for burglary reduction will be made more difficult to meet as a result of new residential construction.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether the distribution of police response time to in-progress burglaries differ according to the level of social disorganization across different neighborhoods.

Using 2006 calls for service data collected from the Dallas and Houston Police Departments and from the 2000 US Bureau of Census statistics, the effects of social disorganization on police performance were examined through multilevel analysis of the distribution of police response time patterns across different neighborhoods in Dallas and Houston.

The analysis of the DPD and HPD in-progress calls produced somewhat consistent findings on the relationship between the level of social disorganization and police response time. Concentrated disadvantage, immigrant concentration, and residential stability are important predictors of the distribution of police response time patterns in Dallas and Houston.

Neighborhood social disorganization is related to the distribution of agency response time patterns. Detailed response time analysis is crucial for agencies to improve police performance and the community-police relationship.

In the policing literature, researchers have tended to neglect rapid response when examining many aspects of policing. The present study expands on existing research by examining the theoretical link between the level of neighborhood social disorganization with the distribution of rapid police response to in-progress burglary in two cities.

Prisons have been considered ‘schools of crime’ (Walker, 1995) This study examines this notion in relation to burglary. Questionnaires and a burglary‐related task were completed by 31 participants in a category B prison. A correlational analysis was used to examine how knowledge of burglary‐specific cues and antecedents to crime might increase with time spent in prison. The effect of antecedents was also analysed with respect to the perceived burglary‐difficulty of a property. No changes were found with time for the specific cues (eg barriers to the property) but were present for one antecedent, self esteem (P<0.05), for the burglary group. An example of a predictor of perceived burglary‐difficulty was risk‐taking behaviour. The results are interpreted as indicating that prisons do not act as ‘schools of crime’. Future research possibilities are then discussed.