Modeling the target selection process of residential burglars in Flanders at the community, neighborhood and house-level

Burglars rely on a spatially structured, hierarchical, sequential selection process when selecting targets. They initially select a suitable area and then gradually narrow down their selection until they have identified the house they intend to burglarize. The ultimate outcome of this target selection process is a particular house. However, until now studies on burglary location choice modelled this process with larger spatial units of analysis such as residential neighborhoods, census blocks or small-scaled postal code areas as the outcome. This study investigates burglary target location choice in Flanders, Belgium. It introduces two advances over previous studies. First, it models burglars’ choice for a particular target at the actual outcome of their selection process: the house. Second, it simultaneously includes measures for municipality, neighborhood and house-level environmental factors in order to better understand the hierarchical interplay between environmental characteristics in burglars’ target selection process. This study uses burglary data recorded by the Belgian Federal Police between 2006 and 2012. A total of 721 cleared burglaries undertaken by 574 unique suspects were included. Using discrete spatial choice modeling, we estimate the effects of municipality, neighborhood and house-level environmental factors on residential burglary target selection in Flanders, Belgium