DISTANCE DECAY REEXAMINED

The "journey to crime," or the study of the distance between an offender's residence and offense site, has been a subject of study within criminology for many years. Implications arising from such research touches the majority of criminological theories. An overriding conclusion from this line of research is that most crimes occur in relatively close proximity to the home of the offender. Termed the distance-decay function, a plot of the number of crimes that an offender commits decreases with increasing distance from the offender's residence. In a recent paper, Van Koppen and De Keijser raise the concern that inferring individual distance decay from aggregate-level data may be inappropriate. They assert that previous research reporting aggregated distance-decay functions conceals individual variations in the ranges of operation, which leads them to conclude that the distance-decay function is an artifact. We do not question the claim that researchers should not make inferences about individual behavior with data collected at the aggregate level. However, Van Koppen and De Keijser's analysis raises four important issues concerning (1) the interpretation of the ecological fallacy, (2) the assumption of linearity in offender movements, (3) the interpretation of geographic work on profiling, and (4) the assumption of random target selection within a delimited range of operation. Using both simulated and nonsimulated data, we present evidence that reaches vastly different conclusions from those reached by Van Koppen and De Keijser. The theoretical implications of our analyses and possibilities for future research are addressed.     

A Poverty of Imagination: Blaming the Poor for Inequality

Inequality in Britain today is now so deep that the top 10 per cent own 100 times more than the bottom 10 per cent, yet there is remarkably little public concern or anger about poverty. Indeed, compassion and concern for the poorest in society has actually declined in recent years due to the continued, and even increased, prevalence of the view that poverty is largely caused by laziness and lack of willpower, or is simply an unavoidable fact of modern life. Either way, many people tacitly accept that ‘the poor will always be with us’. Moreover, much of the British public believes that there are sufficient opportunities to succeed for those who try hard enough, and also that it is the middle class which actually struggles the most, economically or financially. These assumptions are highly conservative in their ideological and political implications because they limit public support for egalitarianism and extensive wealth redistribution from rich to poor.     

Law‐Linked Justice and Existence‐Linked Justice

Abstract. Justice as a manifestation of “the just” is an evasive concept. On the one hand there is the law, an operation run by professionals. On the other hand there are the citizens the law is meant for. Generally speaking the law strives for justice. But the law has to protect many different interests and must work through legal devices. Therefore the justice that emerges from it is necessarily a legal compromise. For the citizens the legal rules are a given reality. Generally they will agree that the law is there to achieve justice but legal arguments that justify a rule or decision cannot have the same value for them. In cases that affect them personally, justice will be a personal, existential experience, which may be incompatible with legal justice. It is hard to keep these two forms of justice under one roof. In order to make this easier this paper proposes a conceptual split between “law‐linked justice” and “existence‐linked justice.” It is argued that the law cannot in truth to its rational origin ignore the citizens’ experience of justice, out of the ordinary as they may be.