Practical Skills
Crime Displacement Paper
The following paper has been written by a crime reduction practitioner who has experienced negative views of crime displacement. It seeks to explore why those views are held and how this can damage crime prevention work. It provides a good overview of the theory and research surrounding crime displacement. The full paper is given below in on-screen format, or you can download a print version (without navigation bars and in a larger font) or the full file in Word:
Crime Displacement - Word 97 (95 Kb)
Crime displacement: the perception, problems, evidence and supporting theory
Stephen Town, Bradford District Architectural Liaison Officer
This dissertation will seek to show that the issue of crime displacement is one of the most widely misunderstood aspects of crime. It will aim to explore the reasons for this situation and to assess the large quantity of available evidence. It will then argue that the evidence refutes the overwhelmingly held opinion, which has long damaged crime prevention initiatives. Finally, it will seek to explain the reasons why reality is so at odds with perception.
Contents
Displacement and ‘Common Sense’
Reducing the opportunity for crime through situational crime prevention has long had its critics. Situational crime prevention aims to change the environment or setting that criminals operate within, so that crime requires more effort, more risk and produces lower rewards. This approach has been criticised because it is said to merely move (displace or deflect) crime in one of five ways – described by Felson and Clarke (1998):
-
crime can be moved from one location to another (geographical displacement);
-
crime can be moved from one time to another (temporal displacement);
-
crime can be directed away from one target to another (target displacement);
-
one method of committing crime can be substituted for another (tactical displacement);
-
one kind of crime can be substituted for another (crime type displacement).
If true, this would seriously undermine crime prevention initiatives. After all, what would be the point of spending considerable time, effort and money to simply move a problem? Indeed, wouldn’t this make the situation even more fluid, unpredictable and difficult to manage? Dealing with crime is a core task for the police and surely within its ranks we might reasonably expect to find an informed view of the subject. Unfortunately, this is rarely the case. Barr and Pease (1990) comment, “Experience in mounting crime-prevention initiatives shows that scepticism about their worth is often and frustratingly based on the presumption of total displacement . . . Most galling is the frequency with which extreme case pessimists are to be found among police officers whose confidence about the crime reduction effects of patrolling choices has failed to be justified by research.”
This acceptance of the idea of total displacement has been highly damaging to crime prevention within the police service and, indeed, has even been described as “paralyzing” (Cornish and Clarke 1986). Is this easy acceptance of displacement sometimes a convenient excuse to justify inaction? Hill and Pease (2001) believe so. They comment, “Sometimes the anticipation of displacement is transparently self-serving, with the failure to act being justified by reference to the certainty of displacement.” The author encountered this attitude, in 1996, at an early meeting with local authority technical officers, held to discuss a proposal that the authority adopt new security standards. One officer commented, “What’s the point? They’ll get in anyway, and even if they don’t, they’ll just go somewhere else.” As Hill and Pease (2001) comment, “As the clinician’s tap evokes the knee jerk, so the crime prevention project evokes the claim from someone that ‘prevented’ crime has merely been displaced.”
The displacement theory is widely accepted because it is instinctively seen as ‘common-sense,’ which is reinforced by our understanding of the way the world works – or is thought to work. Criminals are, after all, criminals. Stop them in one location and surely they just find another. Common sense is a valuable commodity, but it has its limitations and changes with time. In 1492 it was ‘common-sense’ that the world was flat. Christopher Columbus, with a few others, knew this to be false, but arguing his case involved challenging people’s perceptions of the world they lived in and the way it worked. (Common sense caused Columbus another problem when his own view of the world convinced him that he’d landed in China – which, to his bewilderment, proved to be the Bahamas.) As late as 1633, Galileo Galilei was brought before the Inquisition on a charge of heresy, which carried the death penalty, for very carefully questioning the God ordained, common sense view that the earth was the centre of the universe. He was convicted, sentenced and his book, the Dialogue, banned by the Roman Catholic Church until 1822. It is not known if Galileo, a devout Catholic, saw the irony in the fact that the common-sense view of the world was based on the understanding of two ancient classical scholars: Aristotle and Ptolemy – both pagans. Questioning the overwhelmingly held assumption of crime displacement does not quite result in a charge of heresy and a visit to the Inquisition, but it certainly places one in a very small minority. You may have all the evidence but don’t expect much support.
The Great Divide
A second and related criticism of situational crime prevention measures is that they are said not to address the root causes of crime because they do not attempt to change individuals’ willingness or desire to commit offences. Thus, those who seek to explain crime by understanding the motivations, background and social context of criminals see themselves as having a fundamentally deeper and more rounded understanding of the problem than their rather utilitarian ‘situational’ counterparts. Those researching into displacement have detected this attitude. Hesseling (1994) commented “displacement has far too often been a topic primarily discussed on the basis of assumptions or value judgments . . . [T]hese critics tend to base their conclusions on ideological grounds rather than on the basis of sound empirical knowledge”. Hill and Pease (2001) go further, describing the discussion as “ill informed and misleading”. The two strategies of social and situational prevention have effectively been in competition with one another – sometimes for funding. Although this sterile conflict is largely a thing of the past, it still occasionally arises. The two strategies both have the same aim and should surely complement each other. Pease (1999) provides a succinct summary: “It is probably not going too far to say that the best strategy for crime control is now clearly a combination of proven techniques for the reduction of individuals’ tendency to commit crime through intervention in childhood, and the manipulation of environments to make that more difficult.”
Strangely, displacement of crime is almost solely discussed in connection to prevention initiatives. And yet a sixth and much more plausible form of displacement – which is very rarely considered or discussed – is known as ‘perpetrator displacement,’ a term coined by Barr and Pease (1990). Ironically, whilst perpetrator displacement is the least discussed and most neglected form, it may be the most credible. Hill and Pease (2001) comment, “The closest one can imagine to complete displacement would be in respect to what has come to be known as ‘perpetrator displacement’, whereby a crime opportunity is so compelling that the removal of any number of offenders will not prevent the crime. The obvious example concerns drug importation from a third world country, in which poverty generates an unlimited pool of volunteers to be ‘mules’.” Poverty is not the only generator of new perpetrators: vulnerability and a tempting target produce the same effect. Many police officers will have gone time and again to the same premises, which has been repeatedly burgled, often despite a number of arrests. The cause is often the inherent vulnerability of the premises, or the high desirability of the products found there. No one would argue that the arrests are a waste of time, but a Crime Prevention specialist might point out that only changing the inherent vulnerability of the premises is likely to genuinely alter the situation for the victim – and stem demand on the police.
The Suicide Analogy
Let us now move on to the research into crime displacement. Fortunately, there is a large body of research into the subject, which is partly because of its importance and partly because of the fierce debate that it has aroused. Oddly, at least initially, is the fact that “the behaviour most intensively analyzed by criminologists in relation to the displacement hypothesis is not a crime: it is suicide” (Barr and Pease 1992). What, one might well ask, does suicide have do with it? Well, taking the decision to commit suicide is, without being flippant, a very final and major decision. If suicide could be reduced or prevented by the removal of a ‘popular’ method or opportunity (a situational measure), then surely the much less major decision to commit crime could be heavily influenced by opportunity reduction. Conversely, the displacement theory would plausibly suggest that a suicide prevented by the removal of one method would simply result in displacement to another method.
Research by Clarke and Mayhew (1988) is revealing and provides the basis for an interesting and useful analogy with crime. In 1958 the number of suicides committed using domestic gas was 2,637, which was very nearly half the total of all suicides. Gas at this time contained high levels of carbon monoxide, but this began to change in the 1960s, as gas began to be manufactured from oil instead of coal. In 1968, a second major change occurred when natural gas was discovered in the North Sea, which is entirely free of carbon monoxide and almost impossible to use for suicide. By the middle of the 1970s natural gas had been introduced in most parts of the country. The rapid change to non-toxic gas allowed Clarke and Mayhew to assess the effect on suicide. The following table (abridged from Felson and Clarke 1998) illustrates the rapid decline in suicides using gas:
Suicides In England and Wales
|
Year |
Total Suicides |
Suicides by Domestic Gas |
Percentage of Total |
|
1958 |
5,298 |
2,637 |
49.8 |
|
1962 |
5,588 |
2,469 |
44.2 |
|
1966 |
4,994 |
1,593 |
31.9 |
|
1970 |
3,940 |
511 |
13.0 |
|
1974 |
3,899 |
50 |
1.3 |
|
1977 |
3,944 |
8 |
0.2 |
Suicide by gas had been virtually eradicated in less than twenty years, and the overall number of deaths reduced by 25%. Clarke and Mayhew point out that this “deeply surprising” reduction took place during a period of economic uncertainty, when the rate might be expected to increase, which, indeed, was the trend in most European Countries.
Why didn’t people simply choose another method? Well, domestic gas had a number of advantages as a form of suicide: it was readily available in every home, was painless, simple to use, didn’t disfigure and was undoubtedly lethal. On the other hand, some of the alternatives are unattractive, unpleasant, messy and painful. Some require considerable courage, are less lethal (sleeping pills), and some are not normally readily available (firearms). Put quite simply, many people chose to live who would otherwise have chosen to end their lives. Changing opportunity, then, even where one might reasonably expect total displacement, had affected behaviour.
This, I believe, is a convincing analogy, but research on suicide is unlikely to change the opinion of Barr and Pease’s (1990) “extreme case pessimists”. Only research directly related to crime could hope to achieve that, and we will now move into that arena.
Research on Crime Displacement
Research on crime displacement began to be carried out in a more systematic manner during the 1990s. There was a substantial step forward when research in Canada (Gabor 1990) and the United States (Eck 1993) specifically studied displacement and found it to be much less of problem than had generally been supposed. Predictably, Eck suggested that where displacement did occur it was most likely to be to similar targets or to similar and adjacent areas.
The major breakthrough, however, came in 1994. The Ministry of Justice in Holland tasked Professor Rene B.P. Hesseling with finding and systematically analysing all the available literature on crime prevention measures in which researchers had specifically looked for evidence of displacement. This huge task took fourteen months and involved reviewing fifty-five published articles, including those of Gabor (1990) and Eck (1993). Twenty of the studies were British studies, sixteen were from the United States, ten were from Holland and the remaining nine came from five different countries, all from the developed world. Twenty-two of the studies found no displacement, and six of these found evidence that crime prevention measures had produced a beneficial effect in adjacent areas – known as diffusion of benefits. Thirty-three studies found some form of displacement, mostly quite limited, and no study found complete displacement of crime. The summary states “displacement is a possible, but not inevitable consequence of crime prevention. Further, if displacement does occur, it will be limited in size and scope. This conclusion is supported by other review studies on the topic”.
Although the findings were overwhelmingly positive, there was, not surprisingly, variation between different crimes. Drug dealing, for example, had been found to be susceptible to displacement (Rengert 1990, Sherman 1990, Caulkins 1992, Eck 1993), which echoed the views of Barr and Pease (1990) on perpetrator displacement. However, the commonly asserted belief that the behaviour of drug addicts is fixed and impervious to logic or a change in opportunity was not confirmed. Cromwell, Olson, Avary and Marks (1991) interviewed thirty active, drug-addicted burglars and concluded “prevention does not always lead to displacement”. In relation to addicts’ behaviour they found that “Heroin addicts appear to be more capable of controlling their habit than previously believed . . . The research revealed numerous instances where an addicted offender planned a burglary and was deterred temporarily . . . Occasionally the deterred burglar located another burglary target and committed a burglary, as intended. Just as often, however, the planned crime was not committed . . .” The author spent three years in the Bradford Vice Squad and also found that most addicts assessed risk and consequences to a far greater extent than is generally supposed.
Residential Burglary
Hesseling’s review of research was particularly positive in relation to residential burglary, with no evidence of displacement being discovered (Spickenheuer 1983, Forrester, Chatterton and Pease 1988, Schneider 1988, Lindsey and McGillis 1988, Pease 1991). This is important, not only because many crime prevention initiatives are targeted on burglary, but also because this crime is consistently found to be one of the public’s main concerns (City of Bradford 1998). Residential burglary initiatives should therefore start confident in the knowledge that effective measures will produce net gains. The Royds regeneration scheme in Bradford is an example. The area comprises three council estates, which, in 1995, had an exceptionally severe rate of burglary, described as follows in a report (Town 1996):
The West Yorkshire Police area has the unenvied record for the worst rate of burglary dwelling in the country. One home in every fifteen is burgled annually (65 offences per 1000 households). The Royds area is situated in the Odsal division, which has by far the worst rate in West Yorkshire. One home in every seven is burgled annually (138 offences per 1000 households). And the worst area in the worst division in the worst force? You probably guessed it, the Royds! A separate rate has not yet been calculated, but is known to be far in excess of the appallingly high divisional average. It is estimated that at least one home in every six is burgled annually (165 per 1000 households).
As a comparison, the latest recorded crime figures (Home Office 2001) show the national average for burglary dwelling to be 20.9 per 1000 households.
Five years on, 1,338 houses have been refurbished to standards exceeding those required by the Police Secured by Design scheme. There is no record of any refurbished house ever being forcibly entered in over five years. (‘Sneak in’ burglaries and failed attempts, however, reduced the initially reported burglary reduction figure to 82%.) The Royds area is surrounded by privately owned housing and the immediate assumption was that burglary must have been displaced into these areas. At a meeting to evaluate the Royds scheme a senior police officer commented, “Well done, I suppose it’s all gone next door.” In fact, burglary in the adjoining areas had fallen. This attitude has understandably long frustrated those engaged in crime prevention. The Kirkholt burglary prevention project in Rochdale suffered from a similar lack of understanding. Hill and Pease (2001) explain: “During the Kirkholt experiment in the mid-80s, a local paper splashed across its front page the claim by a local councillor that the project had merely moved the burglary problem down the road. All the evidence gainsaid this, but damage was done. Since then, the assertion of displacement dogs every second step the second author takes professionally. Displacement is claimed to have happened in every project undertaken, with the evidence for this crumbling whenever the assertion is challenged.”
The Damage to Crime Prevention
How damaging is the lack of understanding on displacement? How much harder does it make obtaining funds to repeat such projects if those holding the purse strings assume they are merely moving the problem? Perhaps we can never truly know the answer, but the value of such projects is wider than perceived. In The Third Way: The Renewal of Social Democracy, Giddens (1998) argues: “A renewed emphasis upon crime prevention rather than law enforcement can go hand in hand with the reintegration of policing with the community . . . These approaches can in fact contribute directly and indirectly to furthering social justice. Where civil order has decayed along with public services and building stock, other opportunities decline also. Improving the quality of life in a neighbourhood can revive them.” As each burglary prevented saves the victim and society £2,300 (Brand and Price 2000), perhaps the case can be made for burglary reduction schemes even in purely monetary terms.
The Hesseling review was highly authoritative and convincing. Amongst criminologists it produced an unusual degree of consensus, which has, if anything, increased. Unfortunately, the reality is that the research has overwhelmingly not entered the public domain and, regrettably, barely entered the consciousness of the police service.
Beyond the Hesseling Review
Of course, discussion and research did not end in 1994, so what has been found since then? Much the same. Indeed, subsequent research findings are remarkably consistent with Hesseling. A Kansas City initiative to deal with gun related violence in identified ‘hot spots’ increased gun seizures by 65% and reduced gun related crime by 49%. A study by Sherman, Shaw and Rogan (1995) found no measurable displacement of gun crime to patrol beats surrounding the target area. Also in 1995, an evaluation of a car crime initiative (Hesseling and Aron) in the centre of Rotterdam, Holland, found no displacement of car crime to other areas, but did find evidence of a switch to other types of theft in the city centre. Green (1995) found that a multi-agency approach to dealing with drug and disorder problems in Oakland, California, produced a “net diffusion of benefits in the areas surrounding targeted places”. The repeat victimisation project in Huddersfield (Chenery, Holt and Pease 1997) looked for evidence of burglary displacement. Finding none, they commented, “substantial displacement outside the division seems implausible in the extreme. It makes no sense”. Credit card fraud was the subject of a study in Canada (Mativat and Tremblay 1997), which found that increased security measures did not result in displacement to other crimes. Felson and Clarke (1998) quote a similar experience: “New identification procedures greatly reduced check frauds in Sweden, with no evidence of displacement to a range of ‘conceivable’ alternative crimes.” On the other hand, a case study in the financial centre of Copenhagen, Denmark (Carstensen and Frederiksen 1997), into the effects of camera surveillance, and other measures, on robbery concluded that whilst robbery had reduced for those able to afford the prevention measures, it had increased for those who could not. A review of the effect of situational crime prevention measures in Sweden by Knutsson (1998) produced very positive results across a range of offences (burglary, oddly, was an exception). Where displacement was studied, the results were assessed as ‘benign’.
In 1999 three evaluations were conducted to assess the impact of the police Secured by Design scheme on crime. The evaluations were carried out by the Building Research Establishment (Pascoe 1999), Jon Brown of Gwent Police in South Wales (Brown 1999) and by the Applied Criminology Group of the University of Huddersfield (Armitage 1999), later summarised and published as Home Office briefing note 7/00 (Armitage 2000). The results of all three studies were very positive and the issue of displacement was discussed to varying degrees. Although not specifically focused on displacement, the BRE report, commenting on a large burglary reduction in one scheme, states, “it has not displaced the crime to the neighbours”. Brown’s report found no evidence of displacement from prevented burglary into other crime. Assessing displacement was a specific research aim of Armitage’s study. The conclusion (1999) states, “As regards displacement, the evidence from the broad based analysis suggests that . . . there is a diffusion of benefits, as opposed to displacement of crime . . . This is particularly evident on some estates.” At the time of writing (April 2001), Home Office commissioned research is being carried out into displacement by a consortium from Liverpool, Huddersfield and Hull universities. Twenty-one Burglary Reduction Programmes in the north of England are being evaluated. Early indications are that there has been possible displacement in six areas, but with possible diffusion of benefits in nine areas. In short, the findings are consistent with previous research into this subject.
Why Isn’t Crime Displaced?
Displacement exists: thirty-three of the studies reviewed by Hesseling (1994) found some displacement, although overwhelmingly small in scale. Why, then, is the research so fundamentally and consistently positive? Why isn’t crime displaced in the way or amount that common sense assumes will happen? For crime to be displaced it first has to be prevented, which is rather easy to overlook. The first task, then, is to show how crime is successfully reduced and then answer the question of why it is then not displaced. The author will argue that research into two vital areas provides the answers: firstly, ‘opportunity theory’, the crucial importance of which has long been underestimated, will show how crime is reduced. Secondly, consistent research findings into the distances overwhelmingly travelled by criminals to offend will explain why prevented crime is not displaced.
Clarke (1997) believes that criminologists have generally shown little interest in situational crime prevention. This neglect stems from what he regards as two mistakes of modern criminology. “First, the problem of explaining crime has been confused with the problem of explaining the criminal”. The second related mistake is “to confuse the problem of controlling crime with that of dealing with the criminal. Moss and Pease (1999) make the same point: “the problem of crime tends popularly to be reduced to the problem of what to do about the criminal”. Clarke argues that these assumptions are based directly on the mistaken belief that offenders faced with situational impediments will merely be displaced elsewhere.
As touched on earlier, situational crime prevention is said to neglect the root causes of crime because it doesn’t attempt to change individuals’ disposition to commit offences. This belief assumes that a variety of other factors are ‘root causes’ of crime: child-rearing, education, employment, social environment, psychological factors and even genetic makeup. These factors all have one thing in common to those involved in situational crime prevention – we can’t do anything about them! Most people, including the author, would accept the vital importance of parenting, which will surely affect a child’s attitude to education, employment and society in general. But where does that take us in terms of crime prevention? Frankly, not very far. A frightened, elderly lady, who has been repeatedly burgled, is hardly likely to take comfort from efforts to improve the ‘life chances’ of local youths. She can’t wait for the hoped for results, for society to improve or ‘utopia’ to arrive. Some have gone further and suggested that attempting to reform individuals is beyond the ability of any agency. R. Buckminster Fuller argues (see Poyner and Fawcett 1995), “Don’t attempt to reform man . . . My philosophy and strategy confine the design initiative to reforming only the environment in contradistinction to the almost universal attempts of humans to reform and restrain other humans by political actions, laws and codes.” A bleak view, which surely goes too far; however, does it not contain a kernel of truth? Many of the quoted studies of situational crime prevention have produced positive results, whereas we tend to hope social crime prevention will.
Situational crime prevention can quickly and clearly deliver dramatic results. Clarke (1997) comments, “What makes situational prevention interesting is that it so frequently works.” Frequently is not always. Situational measures, like anything else, can be ill conceived and poorly implemented. However, well-designed measures can produce results far exceeding expectations. For example, the Royds regeneration scheme, discussed earlier, reduced house burglary from more than seven times the current national average to nearly zero on refurbished houses, providing a huge improvement in residents’ quality of life. The scheme has, quite rightly, a full social dimension but it is the transformation in the design and physical security that produced such dramatic and relatively rapid results, not the instantaneous and wholesale reform of local burglars. In short, the scheme radically reduced the opportunity to burgle and the number of offences plummeted. The key, therefore, is reducing opportunity.
Opportunity Knocks
The importance of opportunity is brilliantly elucidated in Opportunity Makes the Thief: Practical Theory for Crime Prevention by Marcus Felson and Ronald V. Clarke (1998). (All subsequent references to Felson and Clarke refer to this work.) The authors convincingly argue that opportunity is a cause of crime and, indeed, a root cause of crime. “critics,” they argue, “often downplay opportunities or temptations as true causes of crime. To show why this is mistaken we note that no crime can occur without the physical opportunities to carry it out. Whatever one’s criminal inclinations . . . crime opportunities are necessary conditions for crime to occur, this makes them causes in a strong sense of the word”. Of course this doesn’t mean that the many other issues involved in why individuals have a particular propensity to commit crime are unimportant, merely that they are complex, controversial and not very helpful to today’s practitioner. Felson and Clarke make the point: “crime opportunities are at least as important as individual factors and are far more tangible and immediately relevant to everyday life”.
The argument that reducing the opportunity for crime results in reductions in crime is simple enough, and one that those involved in Designing out Crime or other situational prevention have long predicated their work upon. Opportunity reduction takes many forms: examples include the design and layout of dwellings and commercial premises to reduce burglary and other crimes, design and management of shops to reduce shoplifting, targeted policing, identification requirements and cash handling procedures to reduce fraud, personal safety advice to reduce robbery, target hardening to make property more difficult to steal, property marking to deter theft and reduce profit, improving street lighting to facilitate natural surveillance and CCTV to deter and detect offences. The list could go on and on.
Felson and Clarke take the argument further by their assertion that opportunity plays a role in causing all crime, not merely property crime. They point out, for example, that homicide rates in the United States are many times higher than Britain and other European countries (although overall crime is lower) because of the widespread availability of handguns, which means that there is much greater opportunity to carry out a quick and deadly attack, often on the spur of the moment and perhaps for reasons that later seem trivial. If the killers were denied a handgun, would many plausibly kill with fists or knives? Zimring (1972) found that the likelihood of death in a violent encounter was directly related to the lethality of the instrument of violence used. Even mature and reasonable people sometimes lose their tempers and control. Put a gun in their hand during this brief period of rage and the result will often be tragic. Again, the people and the context does not change, merely the easy opportunity to squeeze a trigger. The logic is very close to that found earlier in relation to suicide (Clarke and Mayhew 1988).
Felson and Clarke observe the importance of opportunity in relation to sexual offences against children, domestic violence, drug dealing, prostitution and benefit fraud. They comment, “There is no class of crime in which opportunity does not play a role.” The authors conclude: “Altering the volume of crime opportunities at any level will produce a change in criminal outcomes. Town planning, defensible space architecture, problem oriented policing, situational prevention – all of these offer methods for reducing crime opportunities . . . [A]ny success they might have serves as a demonstration of our basic theoretical point, that opportunity is a cause of crime.”
Can opportunity explain the occasional differences in research findings on displacement? One example will suffice to briefly summarise the argument. In the 1970s, legislation required the installation of steering column locks in new cars. Research (Mayhew, Clarke, Sturman and Hough 1976) found that their introduction did seem to displace crime to older cars, which on the surface supports the displacement theory. However, what else could realistically be expected? A measure that only affected new cars, whilst millions of older cars remained unprotected, had not changed the opportunity to offend. The quantity of opportunity had not been ‘squeezed’ sufficiently to make a difference – at least in the short term. The author would argue that this is a consistent feature of the less positive displacement findings.
The Road to Nowhere
Opportunity theory, when explained, tends to make sense to people. However, whilst it explains how to reduce crime, it doesn’t explain why prevented crime isn’t simply displaced. Surely criminals simply move on to an area where opportunity remains unaltered. Well, the second crucial factor involved is the surprisingly short distances travelled by criminals to offend. Home Office Research Study 207, The Road to Nowhere: The Evidence for Travelling Criminals (2000) by Paul Wiles and Andrew Costello outlines the evidence on this subject. The assumption has been that as the mobility of the population has increased, so will travel to offend distances. In fact, Wiles and Costello, commenting on previous research into this subject, state, “The most general and consistent [finding] is the fact that offenders do not appear to travel very far.” Indeed, there is a remarkable degree of consistency in the findings “from Rochdale to Riyadh,” as Chenery, Holt and Pease (1997) comment. The Kirkholt project in Rochdale (Forrester, Chatterton and Pease 1988) found that “The most striking point . . . was the extent to which burglary . . . was highly local.” Al-Kahtani (1996) arrived at the same conclusion in a study of burglary in Saudia Arabia. Obviously some criminals do travel longer distances, but the point is that overwhelmingly crime is committed relatively close to home. Wiles and Costello found that the average distance travelled to commit domestic burglary was 1.8 miles. Distances became even shorter in council estates, averaging less than a mile. Interestingly, the importance of opportunity is far from lost on Wiles and Costello: a main finding is “Much travel associated with crime is not primarily driven by plans to offend but appears to be much more dependent upon opportunities presenting themselves during normal routines.”
The following table (reproduced from Wiles and Costello) clearly demonstrates the importance of opportunities presenting themselves to offenders:
Target selection: Burglary
|
Reason for Selection |
Percentage (%) |
|
Chance |
63 |
|
Passing and looked easy (poor security) |
31 |
|
Passing and looked easy (unoccupied) |
26 |
|
Passing and looked easy (isolated/quiet) |
26 |
|
Had noticed previously |
20 |
|
Tipped off |
17 |
|
Passing and looked wealthy |
14 |
|
Revenge |
6 |
|
Other |
6 |
Burgled before |
3 |
Note: percentages add up to over 100 because of multiple answers.
Wiles and Costello’s linkage of crime and relatively short patterns of routine movement strongly confirms earlier work by Beavon, Brantingham & Brantingham (1994), which also suggested that that the majority of property crime occurs within an offender’s routine activity and awareness space – the familiar and regularly used areas between home, shops, school and leisure areas.
If criminals overwhelmingly commit crime within relatively short distances of their home, then reducing the quantity of opportunity within that area should reduce crime, which is then very unlikely to be displaced outside of offenders’ normal travel distances. The combination, then, of opportunity theory and short travel to offend distances connect beautifully in explaining how crime is reduced but not displaced.
Conclusion
Concern about displacement is natural. However, when plausible but overwhelmingly unfounded belief affects policy and decision making, the results are harmful. The results of the Hesseling review (1994) are regularly repeated in Home Office research papers (Chenery, Holt and Pease 1997, Felson and Clarke 1998, Clarke 1999), but opinions are overwhelmingly still based on insidious, ideological beliefs (“There’s no point until we improve society.”) or simplistic assumptions. This is not to say that partial displacement does not exist or that some crimes are not more prone than others. However, the conclusion is clear: crime prevention initiatives can produce very substantial net gains, and commonly very little or no displacement is found. Reducing the local ‘pot of opportunity’ reduces crime.
References
Al-Kahtani, Saeed. (1996) Travel to Crime Distances of Burglars in Saudi Arabia (Unpublished PhD: University of Manchester).
Armitage, Rachel. (1999) An Evaluation of Secured by Design Housing Schemes throughout the West Yorkshire Area (The University of Huddersfield: The Applied Criminology Group).
Armitage, Rachel. (2000) An Evaluation of Secured by Design Housing Within West Yorkshire (Home Office Briefing Note 7/00).
Barr, Robert and Professor Ken Pease. (1990) Crime Placement, Displacement, and Deflection. In Michael Tonry and Norval Morris (Eds.) Crime and Justice: A Review of Research, vol. 12 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).
Barr, Robert and Professor Ken Pease. (1992) A Place for Every Crime and Every Crime in its Place: An Alternative Perspective on Crime Displacement. In Crime, Policing and Place. Essays in Environmental Criminology (London: Routledge).
Beavon, Daniel J.K. Patricia L. Brantingham and Paul J. Brantingham. (1994) The Influence of Street Networks on the Patterning of Property Offences. In Ronald V. Clarke (Ed.) Crime Prevention Studies, Vol 2 (New York: Criminal Justice Press).
Brand, Sam and Richard Price. (2000) The Economic and Social Costs of Crime. Home Office Research Study 217 (London: Home Office Research, Development and Statistics Directorate).
Brown, Jon. (1999) An Evaluation of the Secured by Design Initiative in Gwent, South Wales (Unpublished Dissertation: University of Leicester).
Carstensen, Niels and Kim Birkholm Frederiksen (1997) Situational Crime Prevention. In Lene Ravn (Ed.) Kriminalistisk Arbog (Copenhagen: Criminal Procedure Institute).
Caulkins, Jonathan P. (1992) Thinking about Displacement in Drug Markets: Why Observing Change of Venue Isn’t Enough. In Journal of Drug Issues.
Chenery, Sylvia, John Holt and Professor Ken Pease. (1997) Biting Back II: Reducing Repeat Victimisation in Huddersfield. Crime Detection and Prevention Paper 82 (London: Home Office).
City of Bradford Metropolitan District Council. (1998) Crime and Disorder Audit 1998 (Bradford: Strategic Management Unit).
Clarke, Ronald V. (Ed.). (1997) Situational Crime Prevention: Successful Case Studies. Second Edition (Albany, NY: Harrow & Heston).
Clarke, Ronald V. (1999) Hot Products: Understanding, Anticipating and Reducing Demand for Stolen Goods. Police Research Series Paper 112 (London: Home Office Research, Development and Statistics Directorate).
Clarke, Ronald V. and Pat Mayhew (1988) The British Gas Suicide Story and its Implications for Prevention. In Michael Tonry and Norval Morris (Eds.), Crime and Justice: A Review of Research, Vol. 10 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).
Cornish, Derek B. and Ronald V. Clarke (1986) The Reasoning Criminal (New York: Springer-Verlag).
Eck, John E. (1993) The Threat of Crime Displacement. In Criminal Justice Abstracts, 25: 527 – 546.
Felson, Marcus and Ronald V. Clarke. (1998) Opportunity Makes the Thief: Practical Theory for Crime Prevention. Police Research Series Paper 98 (London: Home Office Research, Development and Statistics Directorate).
Forrester, David, Mike Chatterton and Professor Ken Pease. (1988) The Kirkholt Burglary Prevention Project, Rochdale. Crime Prevention Unit: Paper 13 (London: Home Office).
Gabor, Thomas. (1990) Crime Displacement and Situational Prevention: Towards the Development of some Principles. In Canadian Journal of Criminology 32: 41 – 74.
Giddens, A. (1998) The Third Way: The Renewal of Social Democracy (London: Polity).
Green, Lorraine. (1995) Cleaning up Drug Hot Spots in Oakland, California: The Displacement and Diffusion Effects. In Justice Quarterly 12: 737 – 754.
Hesseling, Rene B.P. (1994) Displacement: A Review of the Empirical Literature. In Crime Prevention Studies 3 (Monsey, NY: Criminal Justice Press).
Hesseling, Rene B.P. and Aron, U. (1995) Car Burglaries: Reduction or Displacement? The Results of a Rotterdam Campaign to Curb Thefts from Cars (The Hague: Neth).
Hill, Ivan and Professor Ken Pease. (2001) The wicked Issues: Displacement and Sustainability in Ballantyne S. et al. (Eds.) Secure Foundations (London: IPPR).
Home Office (2001) Reported Crime (London: Home Office Research, Development and Statistics Directorate).
Knutsson, Johannes. (1998) The Swedish Experience of Situational Crime Prevention. In Studies on Crime and Crime Prevention 7: 189 – 212.
Lindsey, B. and D. McGillis (1988) Citywide Community Crime Prevention: An Assessment of the Seattle Program. In: D.P. Rosenbaum (Ed.) Community Crime Prevention: Does it Work? (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage).
Mativat, Francois and Pierre Tremblay. (1997) Counterfeiting Credit Cards: Displacement Effects, Suitable Offenders and Crime Wave Patterns. In British Journal of Criminology 37: 165 – 183.
Mayhew, Patricia. Ronald V. Clarke, Andrew Sturman and J. Michael Hough. (1976) Crime as Opportunity. Home Office Research Study 34 (London: H.M. Stationary Office).
Moss, Dr Kate and Professor Ken Pease. (1999) Crime and Disorder Act 1998: Section 17, A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing? In Crime Prevention and Community Safety: An International Journal, 1, 4, 15 - 19 (Leicester: Perpetuity Press).
Painter, Kate and David P. Farrington. (1999) Street Lighting and Crime: Diffusion of Benefits in the Stoke-on-Trent Project. In Painter K. and Tilley N. (Eds.) Surveillance of Public Space: CCTV, Street Lighting and Crime Prevention (Monsey, NY: Criminal Justice Press)
Pascoe, Dr Tim. (1999) Evaluation of Secured by Design in Public Sector Housing (Building Research Establishment).
Pease, Professor Ken. (1991) The Kirkholt Project: Preventing Burglary on a British Housing Estate. In the Security Journal 2: 73 – 77.
Pease, Professor Ken. (1999) Lighting and Crime (Rugby: The Institution of Lighting Engineers).
Poyner, Barry and Dr W.H. Fawcett. (1995) Design for Inherent Security: Guidance for Non-Residential Buildings (London: CIRIA).
Rengert, G.F. (1990) Drug Purchasing as a Routine Activity of Drug Dependent Property Criminals and the Spatial Concentration of Crime (Paper presented at the American Society of Criminology annual conference).
Schneider, A.L. (1988) Neighborhood-Based Antiburglary Strategies: An Analysis of Public and Private Benefits from the Portland Program. In: D.P. Rosenbaum (Ed.) Community Crime Prevention: Does it Work? (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage).
Sherman, Lawrence W. (1990) Police Crackdowns: Initial and Residual Deterrence. In Michael Tonry and Norval Morris (Eds.) Crime and Justice: A Review of Research, Vol. 12 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).
Sherman, Lawrence W. James W. Shaw and Dennis P. Rogan (1995) The Kansas City Gun Experiment. Research in Brief Series (Washington DC: U.S. National Institute of Justice).
Spickenheuer, J.L.P. (1983) Untranslated. Voetsurveillance en Preventievoorlichting in AmsterdamOsdorp; een Onderzoek naar de Effecten op de Criminaliteitsontwikkeling. ’s-Gravenhage, NETH: Staatsuitgeverij.
Tilley, Nick. Professor Ken Pease, Mike Hough and Rick Brown. (1999) Burglary Prevention: Early lessons from the Crime Reduction Programme. PRCU Research Paper 1 (London: Home Office Research, Development and Statistics Directorate).
Town, Stephen. (1996) Burglary Dwelling: The Opportunity for Reduction Through Estates Regeneration (unpublished paper for West Yorkshire Police).
Wiles, Paul and Andrew Costello. (2000) The ‘Road to Nowhere’: The Evidence for Travelling Criminals. Home Office Research Study 207 (London: Home Office Research, Development and Statistics Directorate).
Zimring, Franklin E. (1972) The Medium is the Message: Firearm Calibre as a Determinant of Death from Assault. In Journal of Legal Studies 1: 97 – 123.
Revised 5 October 2001
Last update: Last update: 27/08/03 |