ABSTRACT
An offender's patterns of travel around his home, and his familiarity with the area may explain his choice of offence locations (Brantingham and Brantingham, 1980). The hypothesis that offences will tend to be distributed in a circle around the offender’s home was tested on 32 series of burglaries carried out in small towns in the south of England. Home fell in the offence area in the majority of offence series (29 out of 32, p < 0.005), and within the area described by the first five offences in 22 of the 32 series (p < 0.05). The mean distance travelled from home to offend in the whole series is 3.87 km and in the first five offences is 3.67 km, suggesting that distances travelled in committing the first five offences are indicative of the spread of the whole series. This data demonstrates the validity of the circle hypothesis in accounting for individual patterns of burglary.
