A gendered journey to crime: Routine activities, types of businesses, and neighborhood context

Abstract

Offenders target locations that maximize gains and minimize risks, and these are often tied to the built environment and neighborhood social structural characteristics. But gendered routine activities and differential assessments of risk also likely influence where men and women offend and how far they will travel to get there. We investigate these possibilities using data from over 3000 theft arrests in St. Petersburg, FL, and discrete choice modeling to predict where and how far female relative to male suspects travel. We examine whether businesses that might differentially attract women versus men, such as retail, grocery, and convenience stores, shape offending locations, and whether these relationships vary across neighborhood disorder, disadvantage, and distance. We find that neighborhood context outweighs business density in shaping gendered travel patterns. Female suspects disproportionately target neighborhoods with more disorder and travel further distances than male suspects. While disadvantage is predictive of theft location, there is minimal evidence that it varies across gender. While retail and grocery store density play a role, particularly in affluent areas, distance and neighborhood characteristics emerge as the primary factors in where women offend. These findings suggest that the built environment and neighborhood characteristics drive crime travel patterns in gendered ways.