The Burglary as a Clue to the Future: The Beginnings of Prospective Hot-Spotting.” European Journal of Criminology 1(2004):237–55

Predicting when and where crimes are likely to occur is crucial for prioritizing police resources. Prior victimization is an excellent predictor of risk. Repeat victimization, when it occurs, tends to occur swiftly after an initial incident. The predictive power of prior victimization is greater than that of other analysed variables (see Budd 1999). Self-evidently, prior victimization yields no prediction about properties as yet unvictimized. This article, using data about the crime of domestic burglary, contends that research should seek to realize the predictive potential to be gained from both pre- and post-victimization factors. One of the advantages of crime reduction through the prevention of repeats is that it offers a constant (and, it is hoped, declining) rate of events that trigger preventive action, and hence a natural pace for preventive work. In that spirit, post-victimization prevention should, as well as targeting the victimized home, also protect other properties that are similar with respect to the dimensions used by burglars in target selection. The central purpose of the research here reported is to identify the ways in which it is prudent to allocate crime reduction resource