ABSTRACT
Studies demonstrate that serial offenders tend to live, or have some form of recognizable base, within an area circumscribed by their offenses (reviewed by Brantingham and Brantingham 1981). One testable formulation of this proposal is the “Circle Hypothesis” described by Canter and Larkin (1993). They showed that 87% of the 45 serial rapists they studied from the South of England each lived within a circle defined by a diameter drawn between that offender’s two farthest offenses. Subsequently Kocsis and Irwin (1997) reported that 82% of serial arsonists, 70% of serial rapists, and 49% of burglars in Australia lived within the defined offending circle. In the United States 56% of serial rapists were found in the circle by Warren et al. (1995, 1998) and 86% of the 126 U.S. serial killers studied by Hodge et al. (1998). Tamura and Suzuki (1997) found support for the Circle Hypothesis in Japan for 72% of the serial arsonists they studied.
