The Attraction of Property Crimes to Suburban Localities: A Revised Economic Model

The economic analysis of crime is further developed by extending Becker's model of criminal behaviour to the spatial distribution of property crimes in Suburbia. The results suggest that where wealthier suburbs are located close to major urban areas they will be `importers ' of crime from the adjacent urban centres, regardless of their ex-penditure on police protection. In such cases the community tax base rather than police expenditure seems to be the major determining factor. The application of economic analysis to the problem within a metropolitan area (which Becker's model of criminal behaviour has received considerable does), but also to address the problem of spatial attention in the economics and criminology literature distribution of crime. That is, it can be used to (e.g. Stigler, 1970; Ehrlich, 1972; Palmer, 1977). explain and predict the number of property crimes This follows from Becker's pioneering work (1968), attracted to each of the suburban and rural com-which analyzed the rationally motivated individual munities within a SMSA, which vary in accessibility who commits a crime. Becker hypothesised that from the crime-generating urban center. rational persons commit crimes if the expected pecuniary income and nonpecuniary satisfaction Hypotheses generated from the criminal act exceed the expected costs. A related question which has also been the The first hypothesis to be tested is that property subject of economic analysis is: What are the crimes are `imported', or attracted, to a community determinants of the level of police expenditure, in direct relation to its relative wealth; and in and its interrelationship with the crime level (e.g. inverse relation to both the effectiveness of its local Carr-Hill and Stern, 1973; Greenwood and Wadycki, police force and its distance from the areas containing 1973; Ehrlich, 1973; Zipin et al., 1974; Chapman, the greatest concentration of potential criminals