Among criminological theories explaining the choice of the area for committing crimes, the most famous are: the theory of the real possibilities that involve attractive for criminal purposes and its accessibility (physical access, visibility and the lack of sufficient protection); - The theory of "routine" (everyday) activity; - Theory of mental representation of space, which is based on the idea that the majority of offenders do not commit crimes in places that are not well known to them.
According to Brantingham, there is some region directly around the residence of the criminal, which he/she perceives as his own and within which he/she does not commit the offense, because of the high risk that he will be recognized and caught.
According to Canter, results of different studies show that criminals, as a rule, choose as the location for their offences places which are not far from their homes. Only serial killers and serial rapists are the exceptions from this rule. For example, Canter investigated that serial killers choose in average 46 km as the distance between homes and crime`s locations. However, the most criminals (75%) prefer not to travel far from their homes to commit some crimes (Youngs, 2013, p. 210).
Another pattern which characterizes criminal spatial behavior is propinquity. “Distance decay” is the concept that can be applied to criminal and non-criminal behavior. It means that frequency of crime is inversely proportional to the distance.
Psychologists are interested in the question of how the criminal spatial behavior forms and what affects how the environment of the individual is presented in one`s cognitive aspect. Some psychologists refer to the concept of "mental maps" in the study of these issues. However, Canter says that not the only encoding of information plays an important role, but also how individual make use of one`s environment. People store information about environment actively. At the same time, passive availability of the environmental cues influences this process of storing information (Youngs, 2013).
Offenders need to know what is possible to do in this area to commit crimes, in particular locations. Criminals get this knowledge about possibilities for offences by having experience in interactions with this environment.
There are distinguished two types of offenders depending on their spatial behavior: commuters and marauders. Commuters are those offenders who choose as locations for their crimes those territories which are not linked to their “home” area. To commit an offence they go or travel to some distanced area of city (country), from where they direct to the crime location. On the contrary, marauders are the criminals which commit offences in the neighborhoods near their base or home. Rossmo also identifies the type of a "nomadic" serial killer who is constantly changing his/her place of residence.
Gregory and Canter analyzed the criminal spatial behavior of 45 rapists. They explore that most of rapists (39 of 45) behaved like “marauders” while only six rapists committed sexual assaults far from their home residences. The study found that the commuters` type of behavior was characteristic for those rapists who committed specific sex crimes (for example, their victims were only prostitutes).
The researchers also suggest that first-time offenders commit crimes spontaneously and more crudely than the subsequent times. Most likely the first offense a person is carried out in a familiar place, and this person will feel more vulnerable.
References
Youngs, D. (Ed.). (2013). Behavioural Analysis of Crime: Studies in David Canter's Investigative Psychology. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd..
Beauregard, E., Rossmo, D. K., & Proulx, J. (2007). A descriptive model of the hunting process of serial sex offenders: A rational choice perspective. Journal of Family Violence, 22(6), 449-463.
