Objectives

This study investigates whether individual- and area-level factors explain variation in the residence-to-crime distances (RC distance) for 10 offense types.

Methods

Five years of police data from Dallas, Texas, are analyzed using multilevel models (hierarchical-linear/multi-level modeling).

Results

Residence-to-crime distances for Dallas offenders varied notably across offense types. Although several area characteristics such as residential instability and concentrated immigration were associated with the overall variance in RC distance, neither these nor the individual-level characteristics used in our models explained the offense-type variance in the RC distance.

Conclusions

Although individual- and neighborhood-level factors did not explain substantial variation in RC distance across the various offenses, neighborhood-level factors explained a significant portion of neighborhood-level variance. Other finding included a curvilinear effect of age on RC distance. The salience of these findings and their implications for future research and offender travel theory are discussed.