494870

2013
CRJ0010.1177/1748895813494870Andresen et al.

Article

Criminology & Criminal Justice

0(0) 1­–20
Age and the distance to crime © The Author(s) 2013
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DOI: 10.1177/1748895813494870
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Martin A Andresen and Richard Frank

Simon Fraser University, Canada

Marcus Felson
Texas State University, USA

Abstract
The journey-to-crime literature consistently shows that the distance to crime is short, particularly
for violent crimes. Recent research has revealed methodological concerns regarding various
(improper) groupings of data (nesting effects). In this article we investigate one such nesting
effect: the relationship between age and the distance to crime. Contrary to much of the research
that investigates this phenomenon, using a large incident-based data set of more than 100,000
crime trips, we find that the relationship between age and the distance to crime is best described
as quadratic but this quadratic relationship is not universal across all crime classifications.

Keywords
age and crime, distance, journey to crime

Introduction
Over a century of criminological research has generated a number of empirical regulari-
ties, including but not limited to: neighborhoods retain their relative criminogenic rank-
ing over time (ecological stability) (Shaw and McKay, 1931, 1942); males are more
violent than females (Boyd, 2000); most offenders age out of crime (Hirschi and
Gottfredson, 1983); and the distance traveled to crime is short, particularly for violent
crime (Wiles and Costello, 2000). This latter empirical regularity is often referred to as
the journey-to-crime literature. This literature dates back at least 80 years (White, 1932),
investigating the distance traveled to crime along a number of dimensions.
As outlined by Rengert (2004), the journey-to-crime has a number of components:
origin; direction; and distance. However, most of the journey-to-crime literature focuses
only on the distance component. This has led Townsley and Sidebottom (2010) to prefer

Corresponding author:
Martin A Andresen, School of Criminology, Institute for Canadian Urban Research Studies, Simon Fraser
University, 8888 University Drive, Burnaby, BC, V5A 1S6, Canada.
Email: andresen@sfu.ca

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2 Criminology & Criminal Justice 0(0)

the term ‘distance to crime’, and we follow their lead here unless we are referring to the
entire journey-to-crime or its body of literature.
The journey-to-crime literature has generated a number of methodological concerns.
As outlined by van Koppen and De Keijser (1997), distance-decay – the primary result
that emerges out of the journey-to-crime literature stating that the distance traveled to
crime is most often short – may be an aggregate offender population phenomenon that
does not emerge at the individual level. They show that if offenders’ distance to crime is
always constant and there are more offenders with short distances traveled, a distance-
decay pattern emerges in the aggregate. Therefore, if this phenomenon is used to model
individual behavior it would be in error. However, Rengert et al. (1999) argued that such
aggregations are sound; Levine and Associates (2002) found strong empirical support for
the claim by Rengert et al. (1999), but this empirical support has methodological issues
of its own (Townsley and Sidebottom, 2010).
Another methodological concern in the journey-to-crime literature is in regard to the
origin of the journey. As stated above, Rengert (2004) identifies this as an important
component in the journey-to-crime but it is often ignored. Though the trip origin location
is often assumed to be the offender’s home, it is quite possible that an offender’s journey
begins from another activity node in his/her activity space (Brantingham and Brantingham,
1981, 1993a) such as a bar (Townsley and Sidebottom, 2010; Wiles and Costello, 2000).
If this is the case in more than a trivial number of crime trips, the distance to crime based
on the offender’s home is likely incorrect. The difficulty in correcting for this concern is
that police data do not (typically) have the trip origin location, only the offender’s home
address (if known) and the crime location; interviews of offenders with regard to specific
crimes would be necessary but then there are interview biases and small sample issues.
Most recently, nesting effects have emerged as a methodological concern in the jour-
ney-to-crime literature.1 Nesting effects refer to effects that arise because of repeated
sampling from the same groups: repeated sampling from within a group tends to generate
less variability than repeated sampling across multiple groups. Bichler et al. (2007),
Smith et al. (2009), and Townsley and Sidebottom (2010) all investigated this phenom-
enon and found nesting to be critical in understanding the distance to crime. Specifically,
only a small number of prolific offenders display distance-decay in their criminal activi-
ties (Townsley and Sidebottom, 2010). Consequently, only a small number of offenders
exhibit the assumed aggregate behavior. However, Bichler et al. (2011) support the
robust findings of distance-decay put forth by Rengert et al. (1999). As such, the ecologi-
cal fallacy argument in distance-decay research may be unwarranted. Regardless, the
difficulty in confirming or denying distance-decay is that most offenders are not prolific
and, hence, may not have enough observations regarding their criminal behavior to con-
firm or deny a distance-decay propensity when it may, in fact, exist.
In this article, we contribute to the journey-to-crime literature through an examination
of what we argue to be another methodological concern that has a nesting effect: the
impact of age on the distance to crime. We do not investigate the presence (or lack
thereof) of distance-decay or perform any modeling that may require us to address
dependent data. Rather, our objective is to determine whether the distance to crime
varies by age and across a number of different crime classifications. Using a large
incident-based police database, we are able to show the importance of age in the distance
to crime and explain previous conflicting results.

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Andresen et al. 3

Theory and Empirics of Age and the Distance to Crime

Theoretical expectations
There are a number of theoretical approaches that may be taken to understand the dis-
tance to crime. As outlined by Townsley and Sidebottom (2010), the importance of
distance in the commission of crime is consistent with the geometric theory of crime2
(Brantingham and Brantingham, 1981, 1993a), rational choice theory (Clarke and
Cornish, 1985; Cornish and Clarke, 1986), as well as Zipf’s (1949) principle of least
effort. Another perspective may be taken to understand the distance to crime from lit-
erature that considers commuting distances and routine activity theory: research has
found that older individuals prefer shorter trip distances than younger individuals
(Rouwendal and Rietveld, 1994; Schwanen et al., 2004); and youth tend to travel away
from their guardians3 as they reach their teenage years (Felson, 1986; Felson and Boba,
2010). Taken together, these two literatures suggest that as we age the distance we
travel from home initially increases and, subsequently, decreases. This occurs because
as we enter the teenage years we wish to escape the watchful eyes of our guardians;
therefore, we may travel further than necessary for all of our activities in order to avoid
guardianship interference. However, as we age and no longer need to escape those
watchful eyes in adulthood, the need to travel further than necessary based purely on
opportunities diminishes. Moreover, we tend to have less discretionary time to travel
further than necessary because of a score of commitments and prefer shorter trip dis-
tances. These two literatures allow for propositions to be made regarding age and the
distance to crime:

Proposition 1: Young offenders travel a short distance to crime that increases during adolescence.

Proposition 2: The distance to crime peaks in early adulthood and decreases as age continues to
increase, eventually going asymptotic.

Proposition 3: The strength of Proposition 1 and Proposition 2 depends on the opportunity

surface4 for different crime types.

Propositions 1 and 2 imply an inverted-U shape to the relationship between age and
the distance to crime, peaking in early adulthood. Proposition 3 states that the curvature
of the inverted-U shape varies by crime classification, depending on the opportunity
surface. For example, crimes with more ubiquitous targets are expected to exhibit greater
curvature (i.e. a sharper increase and subsequent decrease in the distance to crime)
because the need to travel further in youth was not to access more targets, but to avoid
the watchful eyes of guardians; similarly, crimes with more clustered/concentrated tar-
gets in particular areas are expected to exhibit lesser curvature because the need to travel
further is primarily to access more targets (such as commercial areas), not to just evade
guardians. Crimes such as common theft and assault are expected to have greater curva-
tures because of more ubiquitous targets, whereas crimes like commercial burglary are
expected to have lesser curvatures because an offender must travel to a commercial land
use area to commit such a crime, regardless of age.

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4 Criminology & Criminal Justice 0(0)

Empirical evidence from the journey-to-crime literature

As stated above, the research on the distance to crime dates back 80 years to the work of
White (1932). In his research, White (1932) found that the distance to crime was short,
particularly for violent crime – he included 10 crime classifications in his analysis. Since
this publication there has been a considerable amount of research confirming these origi-
nal findings for a number of crime classifications; see Townsley and Sidebottom (2010)
for a recent review. Despite the presence of numerous research studies on the distance to
crime, in general, there is relatively little research on the relationship between age and
the distance to crime. Moreover, this small literature, because of data limitations with
regard to the number of observations, often dichotomizes age ranges. For obvious rea-
sons, this limits the insight that may be garnered from this relationship.
The earliest known study to investigate the relationship between age and the distance
to crime is Reppetto’s (1974) analysis of burglary. He found that older age groups were
willing to travel further, particularly through the use of a vehicle. In the case of property
crimes, Baldwin and Bottoms (1976) found that the distance to crime increases with age,
though they truncated all those aged 16 years or more into one age group. In an analysis
of juvenile offenders, Phillips (1980) found that the mean distance to crime increased with
age; in fact, the distance to crime increased monotonically from 13 to 17 years. Phillips
(1980) explained this phenomenon with reference to youth having a more dispersed set of
friends as they move from elementary to high school and because of increased mobility
through the use of motor vehicles. Nichols (1980) and Snook (2004) bifurcating age at 20
years and Gabor and Gottheil (1984) at 25 years all found that older offenders, on average,
have a distance to crime double that of younger offenders. However, Snook (2004) also
found that older burglars traveled even further for their first burglary.
Costello and Wiles (2001) and Wiles and Costello (2000) were able to analyze the
relationship between age and the distance to crime for seven crime classifications; rather
than using the offender’s home as the trip origin, these authors use the location where the
offender slept the night before the offense that may or may not be the offender’s home.
Contrary to previous research that found the distance to crime increased with age,
Costello and Wiles (2001) and Wiles and Costello (2000) found a statistically significant
and negative correlation between age and the distance to crime for: all offenses; assault;
shoplifting; and theft. They also found a statistically significant and positive correlation
between age and the distance to crime for theft from vehicle and a statistically insignifi-
cant correlation for domestic and non-domestic burglary. These results led Costello and
Wiles (2001) and Wiles and Costello (2000) to state that the often found relationship
between age and the distance to crime (distance traveled increases with age) may be
changing. More recent research shows that this is not the case. Rather, the relationship
between age and the distance to crime is not linear.
Referring to Andy Brumwell’s research on more than 250,000 crime trips for offend-
ers ranging from eight to 68 in West Midlands, United Kingdom, Clarke and Eck (2003)
shed light on what appears to be conflicting evidence regarding the relationship between
age and the distance to crime. Clarke and Eck (2003) showed that there is a sharp increase
in the distance traveled to crime from ages eight to about 20, with a steady but gradual
decrease thereafter – they do not disaggregate by crime classification.

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Andresen et al. 5

Collectively, this research shows that the relationship between age and the distance to
crime is more complex than often portrayed. Though only a re-analysis of past data can
confirm or deny this hypothesis, we expect that the research that found positive relation-
ships between age and the distance to crime was dominated by younger offenders; this is
literally true for studies that only consider youth offenders, Phillips (1980), for example.
And the negative relationships found by Costello and Wiles (2001) and Wiles and
Costello (2000) have enough older offenders that tend to travel lesser distances to make
the average relationship between age and the distance to crime negative. However, this
statement, though supported by the result in Clarke and Eck (2003), needs further inves-
tigation. We perform such an investigation using a large incident-based data set for mul-
tiple crime classifications using offenders aged eight to 68. This allows us to revisit past
results, consider the propositions made above, and parameterize the relationship between
age and the distance to crime.

Data and methods

Criminal incident data
The data employed in the current analysis are from municipalities (police jurisdictions)
in British Columbia, Canada’s western-most province. The entire province of British
Columbia has approximately four million residents living in 186 police jurisdictions,
with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) being responsible for policing 174 of
the 186 police jurisdictions – 67 percent of the provincial population, approximately 2.7
million persons.
The data used in the analyses below are incident-based and extracted from the
RCMP Police Information Retrieval System (PIRS). These data cover the period 1
August 2002 through 31 July 2006 and represent the complete set of incidents dealt
with by the RCMP. With our ability to combine 48 consecutive months of the PIRS
database, any unusual features of any given year or month are ironed out. The entire
PIRS database contains approximately five million contacts with the police that
involve approximately nine million individuals – offenders, victims, complainants,
and witnesses. Of these five million police contacts, approximately 750,000 are com-
mon criminal offenses.
From this large incident-based data set, we extract 12 crime classifications that repre-
sent the majority of property and violent crimes: homicide; sexual assault; aggravated
assault;5 assault; robbery; armed robbery; burglary (residential, commercial, and other);6
theft; theft of motor vehicle; and theft from motor vehicle. This subset of data includes
81,257 crime trips, outlined in Table 1.

Methods
Our methods for analyzing the relationship between age and the distance to crime are
simple but instructive. First, we calculate the Euclidian distance between the offender’s
home and the location of the criminal event. We use Euclidian distance primarily to be
consistent with the previous literature on this subject; also, as found by Townsley and

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6 Criminology & Criminal Justice 0(0)

Table 1.  Distance to crime by crime type, kilometers, all ages.

Crime type First quartile Median Third quartile Interquartile range Count
Homicide 0.00 0.66 4.61 4.61 374
Sexual assault 0.00 0.92 5.13 5.13 5971
Aggravated assault 0.00 0.30 2.52 2.52 8622
Assault 0.00 0.00 1.70 1.70 49,414
Robbery 0.89 2.09 6.49 5.60 856
Armed robbery 0.86 2.51 7.89 7.03 974
Residential burglary 0.35 1.50 4.67 4.32 4872
Commercial burglary 0.71 1.97 5.81 5.10 340
Other burglary 0.62 2.03 4.82 4.19 396
Theft of motor vehicle 0.23 2.21 7.26 7.03 2930
Theft from motor vehicle 0.64 1.78 4.45 3.82 1540
Theft 0.14 1.28 4.71 4.57 4968
All crimes 0.00 0.65 3.51 3.51 81,257
Source: RCMP Police Information Reporting System (PIRS).

Sidebottom (2010), there is little difference in the results when considering both Euclidian
and Manhattan distance.
Because of the skewed distributions in our data we chose not to report the means and
standard deviations for the distance to crime. Rather, we report the median distances, first
and third quartiles, and interquartile range. The use of the median and related statistics also
avoids bias in the reported results from outliers. For example, in one case, a 54-year-old
traveled 289 kilometers to commit a robbery. Also, because of skewed distributions, we
report both parametric (Pearson) and nonparametric (Spearman) correlations.7
Lastly, in order to parameterize the relationship between age and the distance to crime
(as well as investigate Proposition 3, above) we regress the distance to crime against age
and age-squared. If the relationship found by Clarke and Eck (2003) is present in our data
we expect age and age-squared to have positive and negative estimated parameters,
respectively.

Results
In order to be sure there are no peculiarities in our data, we have calculated the distance
to crime for all ages aggregated together. These results are shown in Table 1. With regard
to the median distance traveled to an offense, our data are consistent with previous
research: the distance to crime is short, particularly for violent crime. When all crimes
are aggregated together the distance to crime is also quite short, on a par with the violent
crime classifications, but this is because violent crime classifications (particularly
assault) are highly represented in our data because offenders are more likely to be identi-
fied (and, hence, in our database) in violent crimes – by definition, they interact with the
victim(s). The only result that may be considered inconsistent with past research regard-
ing this empirical regularity is that robbery, often considered a violent crime, has a
median distance to crime more in line with property crime classifications: a median

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Andresen et al. 7

Table 2.  Parametric and nonparametric correlations, distance to crime with age, British
Columbia, Canada, 1 August 2002 to 31 July 2006.

Crime type Pearson Spearman

Homicide −0.47** −0.43**
Sexual assault −0.21* −0.21
Aggravated assault −0.60*** −0.72***
Assault −0.64*** −0.79***
Robbery –0.15 –0.21
Armed robbery 0.13 0.10
Residential burglary 0.23 0.17
Commercial burglary –0.14 –0.10
Other burglary 0.31* 0.34**
Theft of motor vehicle 0.33** 0.30*
Theft from motor vehicle 0.15 0.09
Theft 0.21 0.22
All crimes –0.69*** –0.76***
Note: *indicates statistical significance at the 10 percent level; **indicates statistical significance at the 5
percent level; ***indicates statistical significance at the 1 percent level.

distance to crime that exceeds 2 kilometers for both robbery and armed robbery. However,
if one considers the classification of violent property crime put forth by Indermaur
(1995), this result falls in line with past research on the distance to crime.
Though not the primary concern of this article, the other statistics are worthy of note.
The first quartile, third quartile, and interquartile range all show the same generality that
the distance traveled to crime is short, particularly for violent crime. Perhaps most interest-
ing is to note that all ‘pure’ violent crime classifications and ‘all crimes’ have a first quartile
value of 0 kilometers. Consequently, at least 25 percent of the distances traveled for these
crime classifications are zero, implying that the offenders in these cases are committing
their acts of violence in their homes. Moreover, the median distance to crime for assault is
also 0 kilometers, stating that at least 50 percent of the distances traveled for assault are 0
kilometers. This result is shown to have a particular age pattern in the results below.
Turning to the relationship between age and the distance to crime, the correlations
between single years of age and the respective median distances to crime are shown in
Table 2 – parametric and nonparametric results are qualitatively similar so we will not
discuss them separately. Similar to Costello and Wiles (2001) and Wiles and Costello
(2000) we find that the correlations are statistically significant and negative, statistically
significant and positive, and statistically insignificant depending upon the crime clas-
sification. In fact, our results are the same for: all crimes, assault, residential burglary,
commercial burglary, and theft of motor vehicle.8 The primary difference between our
results and those of Costello and Wiles (2001) and Wiles and Costello (2000), aside from
our analysis having more crime classifications, is that the magnitudes of our correlation
coefficients are greater: the greatest absolute value for Costello and Wiles (2001) and
Wiles and Costello (2000) is 0.17, whereas ours is 0.69 for the parametric correlations
and 0.79 for the nonparametric correlations. Though bigger is not always better, it is

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8 Criminology & Criminal Justice 0(0)

Figure 1. The age–distance to crime curve, by single year of age, all crime types aggregated.
Source: RCMP Police Information Reporting System (PIRS).

interesting to note the strength of the relationship between age and the median distance
to crime. However, correlation coefficients represent the strength of the linear relation-
ship between two variables. And as indicated above, the relationship between age and the
median distance to crime is not linear.
The primary result of our article is shown in Figure 1. Clearly evident from this plot
of age and the median distance to crime is that its relationship is far better described as
quadratic. Similar to the result shown in Clarke and Eck (2003), the median distance to
crime for those youngest in our data (eight years old) is very close to zero and reaches its
maximum at the age of 20 (slightly greater than 1.25 kilometers). The rate of decline in
the median distance to crime shown in Figure 1 is much faster than shown in Clarke and
Eck (2003), returning close to 0 kilometers by the age of 40. Similar to the age–crime
curve (Hirschi and Gottfredson, 1983), there exists an age–distance to crime curve, at
least in the aggregate.
Similar plots of age and median distance to crime for violent crime classifications are
shown in Figure 2. Immediately obvious is that this relationship, though most often pre-
sent to some degree, is far from universal. In the case of homicide (Figure 2a), there is no
evidence of a relationship between age and the median distance to crime until offenders
reach the age of approximately 40. At this age, the median distance to crime becomes
incredibly short, most often 0 kilometers. Sexual assault (Figure 2b) has a far more evi-
dent quadratic relationship between age and the median distance to crime. Though this
relationship is rather volatile after the age of 20, it has a clear downward trend. Aggravated
assault (Figure 2c) and assault (Figure 2d) are clearly driving the aggregate results in
Figure 1. Both of these crime classifications exhibit sharp increases in the median dis-
tance to crime from eight to 20 years, followed by an equally sharp decrease, particularly
for assault. In the case of aggravated assault the median distance to crime is 0 or

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Andresen et al. 9

Figure 2a. The age–distance to crime curve, by single year of age, homicide.

Source: RCMP Police Information Reporting System (PIRS).

Figure 2b. The age–distance to crime curve, by single year of age, sexual assault.
Source: RCMP Police Information Reporting System (PIRS).

effectively 0 kilometers at and after the age of 40; for assault, this median distance occurs
at the age of 25. Moreover, the median distance to crime for assault reaches its maximum
of 0.8 kilometers, approximately half of the maximum median distance for aggravated
assault. The quadratic relationship between age and the median distance to crime is not
particularly evident for robbery (Figure 2e), but is discernible for armed robbery (Figure 2f).
Overall, the quadratic relationship between age and the median distance to violent crime

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10 Criminology & Criminal Justice 0(0)

Figure 2c. The age–distance to crime curve, by single year of age, aggravated assault.
Source: RCMP Police Information Reporting System (PIRS).

Figure 2d. The age–distance to crime curve, by single year of age, assault.

Source: RCMP Police Information Reporting System (PIRS).

is most often evident, but the strength of that relationship clearly varies from crime clas-
sification to crime classification.
The age and median distance to crime plots for property crime classifications are
shown in Figure 3. Similar to the results for the violent crime classifications, the strength
of the quadratic relationship between age and the median distance to crime varies across
property crime classifications. The weakest relationships are for commercial burglary
(Figure 3b), other burglary (Figure 3c), and theft from motor vehicle (Figure 3e). However,

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Andresen et al. 11

Figure 2e. The age–distance to crime curve, by single year of age, robbery.

Source: RCMP Police Information Reporting System (PIRS).

Figure 2f. The age–distance to crime curve, by single year of age, armed robbery.
Source: RCMP Police Information Reporting System (PIRS).

having a weak quadratic relationship between age and the median distance to crime is
expected for these crime classifications. Because of the nature of these crimes, their
opportunity surfaces are restricted to specific land uses (commercial burglary) or so
ubiquitous (theft from motor vehicle) that it is no surprise that age has little to do with
the median distances traveled. Though commercial burglary does have the appearance of
a quadratic trend (this quadratic trend is confirmed in Table 3), any offender that lives in

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12 Criminology & Criminal Justice 0(0)

Figure 3a. The age–distance to crime curve, by single year of age, residential burglary.
Source: RCMP Police Information Reporting System (PIRS).

Figure 3b. The age–distance to crime curve, by single year of age, commercial burglary.
Source: RCMP Police Information Reporting System (PIRS).

a residential area, as opposed to mixed land use in a central business district, will neces-
sarily travel further to commit an offense; this is evident in Table 1, as well. As such, if
an offender travels to a commercial area, s/he is most likely already away from the
watchful eyes of guardians.

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Andresen et al. 13

Figure 3c. The age–distance to crime curve, by single year of age, other burglary.
Source: RCMP Police Information Reporting System (PIRS).

Figure 3d. The age–distance to crime curve, by single year of age, theft of motor vehicle.
Source: RCMP Police Information Reporting System (PIRS).

For residential burglary (Figure 3a), on the other hand, the relationship between age
and the median distance to crime clearly follows a quadratic trend, though there is much
volatility once offenders reach the age of 30 years. Theft of motor vehicle (Figure 3d),
aside from a few outliers, follows a strong quadratic trend, as does theft (Figure 3f).
Aside from the variability in the strength of the relationship between age and the median

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14 Criminology & Criminal Justice 0(0)

Figure 3e. The age–distance to crime curve, by single year of age, theft from motor vehicle.
Source: RCMP Police Information Reporting System (PIRS).

Figure 3f. The age–distance to crime curve, by single year of age, theft.

Source: RCMP Police Information Reporting System (PIRS).

distance to crime, the most notable aspect of the property crime classifications is that
they peak in the median distance traveled later in life than for the violent crime classifi-
cations: approximately 30 years, rather than 20 years – robbery and armed robbery also
peak in later years, but as discussed earlier these crime classifications are more similar to
other property crime classifications than violent crime classifications.

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Andresen et al. 15

Table 3.  Parameterization of quadratic trends, distance to crime with age, British Columbia,
Canada, 1 August 2002 to 31 July 2006.

Crime type Age Age-squared R2

Homicide 2.94 –2.39 0.65
Sexual assault 2.52 –1.85 0.74
Aggravated assault 2.54 –2.30 0.42
Aggravated assault – truncated 3.15 –2.63 0.76
Assault 1.96 –1.84 0.24
Assault – truncated 2.77 –2.09 0.77
Robbery 2.51 –1.73 0.84
Armed robbery 1.98 –1.13 0.84
Residential burglary 2.02 –1.16 0.89
Commercial burglary 2.28 –1.62 0.67
Other burglary 1.46 –0.67 0.70
Theft of motor vehicle 1.76 –0.91 0.82
Theft from motor vehicle 2.13 –1.29 0.87
Theft 2.34 –1.54 0.87
All crimes 3.05 –2.73 0.63

Note: All parameters are statistically significant at the 5 percent level; all parameters are standardized for
comparative purposes.

Lastly, there is the parameterization of the relationship between age and the median
distance to crime, shown in Table 3. As stated in Table 3, all estimated parameters (age
and age-squared) for all crime classifications are statistically significant at the 5 percent
level, and the estimated parameters reported are the standardized coefficients for ease of
comparison across crime classifications. The coefficient of determination, R2, is also
shown in Table 3, revealing that much of the variation in all the median distances to
crime is explained with the quadratic trend. Because assault and aggravated assault con-
sistently have a zero median distance to crime in the older ages, the quadratic trends were
also estimated truncating the data series when the median distance to crime becomes
zero. This is done because the zero median values for these two violent crime classifica-
tions will necessarily bias the age-squared coefficient to be lower in magnitude, making
it more difficult to assess the propositions made earlier.
The results shown in Table 3 are expected given the plots shown in Figures 2 and 3.
The ‘pure’ violent crime classifications (homicide, sexual assault, aggravated assault,
and assault) have the greatest (positive) magnitudes for the estimated parameters repre-
senting age, and the greatest (negative) magnitudes for the estimated parameters repre-
senting age-squared. This is an expected result because these four violent crime
classifications have their median distances to crime peak at earlier ages than the other
crime classifications.
Overall, these results support the importance of age factors in the distance to crime.
Though not all crime classifications are equally bound to an age–median distance to
crime relationship, it is present in most cases. Moreover, the relationship is not linear.
The correlation coefficients shown in Table 2 indicate that many crime classifications

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16 Criminology & Criminal Justice 0(0)

have negative relationships between age and the median distance to crime. Clearly evi-
dent from the graphs, this negative relationship emerges as an average tendency because
the median distance to crime peaks at 20 years of age for most of these cases. As such,
there are 48 observations that exhibit a negative relationship and only 12 observations
that exhibit a positive relationship between age and the median distance to crime; on
average, the relationship is negative. Through visual inspection of our data we have been
able to show that the often found relationship between age and the distance to crime is
not changing (Costello and Wiles, 2001; Wiles and Costello, 2000). Rather, past research
that found a positive relationship between age and the distance to crime either had sam-
ples that had younger offenders, on average, or analyzed crime classifications with
weaker quadratic trends.

Discussion
The journey-to-crime literature has consistently shown that the distance to crime is short,
particularly for violent crime. Recent research, however, has questioned this long-stand-
ing empirical regularity stating that it is the result of not accounting for nesting effects
(Smith et al., 2009; Townsley and Sidebottom, 2010). Essentially, this nesting effect is
the improper grouping of different types of offenders (prolific and non-prolific offend-
ers) that leads to the appearance of a distance-decay for the distance to crime. In this
article we investigate another nesting effect: the improper grouping of different ages of
offenders. Through an investigation of the distance to crime considering individual years
of age, we are able to show that on average the distance to crime increases from adoles-
cence to approximately 20 years of age, then decreases thereafter. As such, because we
are able to explain the differences found by previous researchers (Costello and Wiles,
2001; Wiles and Costello, 2000), there is no need to invoke a change in this relationship
over time.
An obvious question to ask at this point is: how is this relationship between age and
the distance to crime explained? We are confident the explanation lays in the spatially
expanding routine activities as we age. When we are young (pre-teenage years) we are
almost always under the close watch of our guardians. As such, our travels are rarely a
great distance from home. However, as we age and move into the teenage years, we
increasingly try to move away from the watchful eyes of our guardians. This process is
rather natural in the sense that this age is when we strive for independence, but also
because our activities are increasingly moved further away from home (Felson and Boba,
2010). One of the fundamental activities for the teenage years (school) is a prime exam-
ple: as we move from elementary to high school we increasingly have a more dispersed
set of friends and, on average, the high school is further from home than the elementary
school because of its size (Phillips, 1980). The end result of this spatial expansion of our
routine activities is an increase in the distance to crime from adolescence through the
teenage years. But this spatial expansion may also emerge for reasons other than avoid-
ing our guardians. As we get older, we may simply be traveling to spend time with
friends/boyfriends/girlfriends who do not live close to home. Or, as young adults, when
we move out of our parents’ home, we may have to move further away from the best
sources of targets for crime.

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Andresen et al. 17

Regardless of the reasons for this, the spatially expanding nature of our routine activi-
ties peaks in early adulthood. At this stage in life it is no longer necessary to escape the
watchful eyes of our guardians so we do not need to travel any extra distance to under-
take any of our activities. Though the distance traveled to work is going to depend on
land use, our occupation, and where we can afford to live, our commuting distances are
preferred to be shorter as we age into adulthood (Rouwendal and Rietveld, 1994;
Schwanen et al., 2004). The reason for this is simple: efficiency. We do not need to travel
further than necessary in our activities (legitimate or illegitimate), so we do not. As such,
the distance traveled to crime decreases as we age as well.
On the surface, it appears as though our argument is only consistent with Zipf’s (1949)
principle of least effort in adulthood, but this is not the case. This principle must not be
thought of as an absolute principle, but a relative principle. In the context of crime, least
effort is not simply defined as finding the closest target, but the closest suitable target;
suitability is socially defined because for a (relatively brief) portion of our lives we are
being watched rather closely. Therefore, in order to find suitable targets we have to travel
a little further and this coincides with the spatial expansion of our routine activities – the
spatial expansion of our activity space (Brantingham and Brantingham, 1981, 1993a).
Curiously, a similar pattern is found in the research that considers geographic profil-
ing in animal predatory behaviors. Martin et al. (2009) found that the anchor point from
which a great white shark hunts from becomes increasingly fixed as the great white shark
becomes bigger (older). When the great white sharks are younger their hunting activities
are much more sporadic, but become far more predictable as they age. Similarly for
human offenders: as we age, our activity space decreases in size to what is necessary – it
becomes increasingly fixed.9
Overall, we find strong support for the three propositions stated above. Though not
universal, we find strong support for Proposition 1 and Proposition 2: there is an inverted-
U shape to the relationship between age and the distance to crime. Support for Proposition
3 (the strength of Proposition 1 and Proposition 2 depends on the opportunity surface for
different crime types) is more speculative but this is likely because of the aggregate
nature of our analysis. A detailed analysis of individual crime trips considering the home
of the offender, the distance traveled, and the land use of the crime site location would
provide far more information regarding this last proposition. We leave this as an avenue
of future research.
As with any research, ours is not without its limitations. First, because of the size of
our data set, we must assume that all geocoding of home locations and crime site loca-
tions are correct. Though there is always potential for geocoding error, the nature of
geocoding algorithms and the corresponding street networks used for geocoding are con-
stantly improving. Second, as with most research investigating the distance to crime, we
assume the trip origin is the residence of the offender – see Costello and Wiles (2001)
and Wiles and Costello (2000) for an exception. As outlined by Townsley and Sidebottom
(2010), and discussed above, the residence of the offender may not represent the trip
origin for the journey-to-crime. Third, we are only considering crime known to the
police. This is an obvious and unavoidable limitation common in all similar research.
And fourth, our analysis uses people of varying ages, not a group of persons over a long
period of time (a longitudinal study).

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18 Criminology & Criminal Justice 0(0)

However, our data span four years and cover 174 police jurisdictions reported by one
agency. As such, our analysis is not as sensitive to the time frame of our study because it
smoothes out any single aberrant year, if present; having multiple police jurisdictions
limits any bias that may be present because of any biases in particular police jurisdic-
tions (we have urban, suburban, and rural police jurisdictions in our data); and having
only one reporting agency (the RCMP) limits inconsistencies in the reporting of crimi-
nal incidence.
There are a number of directions for future research. First and foremost, our results
must be confirmed in other contexts. Our results are consistent with that found in Clarke
and Eck (2003), but replication is necessary before any generalizations can be made.
Second, the relationship between age and the distance to crime should be investigated
separately in different geographic locations. Our analysis considers British Columbia in
aggregate, but notable differences may be present between urban, suburban, and rural
environments. Third, an investigation into the nesting effects outlined by Smith et al.
(2009) and Townsley and Sidebottom (2010) is in order. The presence of distance-decay
has shown to be present only for prolific offenders, but it is possible that there is nesting
within this result as well: it may only be specific ages of prolific offenders that are driv-
ing the results. And fourth, longitudinal research needs to be undertaken in order to see
if offenders alter their distance to crime (at an individual level) as they age, and whether
this varies by crime type. Clearly, future research is dependent on large data sets that
contain information not only on the crime itself, but those involved – notably the offender.
The more disaggregation or nesting effects investigated the greater is the need for large
data sets to have reliable analyses. Fortunately, such data sets are becoming increasingly
available and in use within the criminological community.

Acknowledgements
We would like to thank two anonymous referees for their insightful comments on an earlier version
of this manuscript. This work was done in the ICURS Laboratory at Simon Fraser University under
terms of a joint Memorandum of Understanding between the Institute for Canadian Urban Research
Studies, Simon Fraser University, ‘E’-Division of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and the
British Columbia Ministry of Public Safety and Solicitor General.

Notes
1. The aggregation concern discussed above is technically a nesting effect, but we consider this
issue to be substantively different from these more recently discussed nesting effects.
2. Given that the geometric theory of crime is a component of crime pattern theory (Brantingham
and Brantingham, 1993b), the importance of distance is relevant for crime pattern theory as
well.
3. We use the term guardian in a general sense to represent parents, grandparents, or any other
caregivers of children.
4. The opportunity surface for a crime may be thought of as the distribution of targets for a crime
across the landscape.
5. For these purposes, aggravated assault combines aggravated assault and assault with a weapon.
6. Most often, ‘other burglary’ refers to a burglary at a structure such as a vacation cottage or a trailer.
7. We also removed any age–crime classifications that had less than 10 observations because
they most often represented radical deviations from the trends in the data.

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Andresen et al. 19

8. Costello and Wiles (2001) and Wiles and Costello (2000) analyze theft from motor vehicle
only. However, both motor vehicle theft crime classifications here have positive correlation
coefficients similar to those of Costello and Wiles (2001) and Wiles and Costello (2000).
9. For example, during the teenage years or early adulthood, one may travel further to investigate a
‘new’ drinking establishment. Such behavior is far less likely to be present when grocery shopping.

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Author biographies
Martin A Andresen is an Associate Professor in the School of Criminology and Institute for
Canadian Urban Research Studies, Simon Fraser University. His research areas include spatial
statistical analysis, environmental criminology, and crime measurement. His recent research has
been published in the fields of criminology, geography, and public health.
Richard Frank is an Assistant Professor in the School of Criminology and Institute for Canadian
Urban Research Studies, Simon Fraser University. His research areas include computational crimi-
nology, environmental criminology, and cyber-crime. He has recent research published in security
and informatics conferences, cybercrime journals, data-mining conferences, and criminology
journals.
Marcus Felson is Professor of Criminal Justice at Texas State University. He is the author of Crime
and Nature and Crime and Everyday Life. He originated the routine activity approach to crime rate
analysis, and is currently studying the co-offending process.

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