The Relation Between Residential Property and Its Surroundings and Day- and Night-Time Residential Burglary

By Lorena Montoya, Marianne Junger and Yfke Ongena

This article examines how residential property and its surroundings influence day- and night-time residential burglary. Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) principles of territoriality, surveillance, access control, target hardening, image maintenance, and activity support underpin the study. Data were collected by observing 851 houses in the city of Enschede, half of which were burgled and half representing a random selection of houses not burgled. Multilevel multinomial regression models were estimated for predicting day- and night-time burglaries. The findings show that territoriality and access control predict daytime burglary while access control and target hardening predict night-time burglary. The analysis controls for offender availability, target attractiveness, and residential stability. The conclusion is that two separate burglary prevention frameworks are needed: one for day-and another one for night-time burglary.

Environment and Behavior 25 September 2014, DOI: 10.1177/0013916514551047