“With a Little Help from My Friends”: The Influence of Co-offenders on the Journey to Crime

Abstract

Scholars increasingly recognize the proliferation of co-offending incidents, estimating that one-quarter to one-half of all offending involves two or more individuals. The presence of co-offenders has been found to impact the duration, type, and intensity of offending yet the literature remains sparse regarding co-offender effects on other aspects of offender behavior, such as the journey to crime. This study examines differences in the journey to crime distance and direction travelled when comparing offenders acting alone versus with co-offenders. This dissertation uses a dataset of official arrest records from the City of Philadelphia, PA for 2010 to 2017 (inclusive), containing 50,928 arrest records and 14,735 individual offenders with at least one arrest on their own and one arrest with a co-offender. Descriptive and inferential circular statistics as well as Euclidean distance metrics are employed to highlight the journey to crime differences when individuals commit solo vs. co-offenses across different crime types. Broadly, the research found no significant differences in journey to crime distance and only exploratory differences in directionality. However, the directional analyses did reveal the importance of the city center as a magnet for offending behavior and several key variations between crime types and offender demographics. The research demonstrates the application of an underutilized methodology in the spatial analysis of criminal justice data while examining the impact of having a co-offender on offender travel behavior.