Farrell, G orcid.org/0000-0002-3987-8457 (2022) Forty years of declining burglary in the United States: Explanation and evidence relating to the security hypothesis. Security Journal, 35 (2). pp. 444-462. ISSN 0955-1662
Abstract
Residential burglary in the United States has declined by over 80% across the last four decades, representing a major social phenomenon that remains largely unexplained. International research indicates a need for investigation of the security hypothesis. Here, 50 years of studies are examined chronologically. A consistent narrative emerges which indicates that household security, largely absent in the 1970s, improved gradually over time. Improvement occurred via several mechanisms: the increased prevalence, quality, coverage, and routine use of security fixtures and fittings. In addition, crime displacement declined over time as fewer households offered easy crime opportunities, and the average age of burglars increased as juveniles found burglary increasingly difficult. Hence the study concludes that gradual household security improvements played a central role in the decline in residential burglary. While the findings suggest a considerable revision is needed to our understanding of burglary and burglars, the likelihood that 50 years of diverse burglary research points in the same direction by chance, and without significant contrary evidence, seems remote. Further implications for theory, policy, and research are identified.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author(s) 2021. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
Keywords: | burglary; crime decline; crime drop; juvenile crime; property crime; securitization; security hypothesis |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Education, Social Sciences and Law (Leeds) > School of Law (Leeds) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number ESRC (Economic and Social Research Council) ES/L014971/1 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 22 Feb 2021 17:50 |
Last Modified: | 11 Jul 2022 15:11 |
Published Version: | https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/s41284-0... |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Palgrave Macmillan |
Identification Number: | 10.1057/s41284-021-00284-4 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:171385 |