Burglars' assessments of territoriality and burglary risk from defensible space cues
Date
1996
Authors
Shaw, Kelly Tryon
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Abstract
This study investigates the hypothesis that burglars perceive defensible space features as indicative of residents who are more territorially concerned, and therefore, that they perceive the property as less vulnerable to burglary. Twenty male offenders, incarcerated for residential break-and-enter, rated thirty photographs of single-family dwellings on the perceived level of residents' territorial concern. The photographs were the same as those used in a previous study by Macdonald and Gifford (1989). In that study, graduate-student raters assessed each photograph on six defensible space categories, and then, twenty-three male offenders incarcerated for residential break-and-enter, rated the photographs on perceived vulnerability to burglary. The results from this study and the previous study by Macdonald and Gifford (1989) were combined. Path analysis was used to test the relations among the three sets of variables: the defensible space categories, the assessments of residents' territorial concern, and the assessments of burglary risk. Implications for Newman's (1972) theory of defensible space and Brown and Altman's (1981) crime site selection model are discussed.