About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline

5 Crime Sci. 1 (2016)

handle is hein.journals/crimsci5 and id is 1 raw text is: Chainey and da Silva Crime Sci (2016) 5:1
DOI 10.1186/s40163-016-0049-6

Crime Science

A *                                                                              S.-    *    -

Examining the extent of repeat and near
repeat victimisation of domestic burglaries
in Belo Horizonte, Brazil
Spencer Paul Chainey  and Braulio Figueiredo Alves da Silva2

Background
Repeat victimisation is the empirically observed pattern
of a person or other target (e.g., a building) being sub-
ject to victimisation a number of times (Farrell and Pease
1993; Polvi et al. 1991). Near repeat victimisation is the
observed finding that targets near to a recent incident
are also at a heightened risk of being victimized (Bowers
et al. 2004). These patterns of repeat and near repeat vic-
timisation have been observed for a range of crime types,
including domestic burglary (Johnson and Bowers 2004a;
Pease 1998; Johnson et al. 2007), vehicle crime (Johnson
*Correspondence: s.chainey@ucl.ac.uk
' Department of Security and Crime Science, University College London,
35 Ta   utstock Square, Lndon, Eng and,  enK
Full lst of author information is available at the end of the article

Z Springer

et al. 2009), and shootings (Haberman and Ratcliffe 2012;
Ratcliffe and Rengert 2008).
The empirical findings from research into the patterns
of repeats and near repeats has led some commenta-
tors to suggest that recent incidents provide a powerful
indicator for predicting where and when crime is likely
to take place (Bowers et al. 2004; Johnson and Bowers
2004b; Pease 1998; Skogan 1996). In turn, these observed
patterns of repeats and near repeats have resulted in
many police agencies designing crime prevention pro-
grammes, in particular for burglary, to counter the pre-
dicted heightened risk of further incidents following an
initial offence with reported successes including reduc-
tions in burglary of 27 % in Trafford (UK) (Fielding and
Jones 2012) and 66 % in Edmonton (Canada) (UCL 2014).
Additionally, several software companies have drawn
from the research findings into repeats and near repeats

© 2016 Chainey and da Silva.This artide is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any
medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original arthor(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Common
license, and indicate if changes were made.

CrosMak

Abstract
Substantial research suggests that a burglary event is a useful predictor of burglaries to the same or nearby properties
in the near future. To date, the research that has suggested this predictive quality has been based on studies that have
focused on crime patterns in western industrialised countries, such as the UK, USA and Australia. These studies have
in turn informed the design of effective burglary reduction programmes that have a specific focus towards counter-
ing the risk of repeats and near repeats.This current study adds to the existing research knowledge by examining
whether patterns of burglary repeats and near repeats are evident in Belo Horizonte, a large Brazilian city. Domestic
dwellings in Brazilian cities, as typified by those in Belo Horizonte, are quite different to dwellings in western coun-
tries-many city-dwelling Brazilians live in apartments in high rise buildings, most houses and apartment blocks
are surrounded by high perimeter fencing, and a reasonable proportion of dwellings are irregular self-constructed
houses. As a consequence, a different infrastructure of domestic living may result in differences in patterns of domes-
tic burglary when compared to patterns in western countries.The research identifies that the extent of repeat and
near repeat patterns in the city of Belo Horizonte are lower than those in comparable western urban contexts. We
discuss the implications of these findings and how they impact on the translating of practice on crime prevention
and crime prediction to the urban Latin American context.
Keywords: Repeat victimisation, Near repeat victimisation, Crime prediction, Crime prevention, Policing, Burglary,
Boost account, Flag account, Foraging theory

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

profiles profiles most