Auto burglary in Sundsvall: a qualitative study with an environmental approach
2016 (English)Independent thesis Basic level (degree of Bachelor), 10 credits / 15 HE credits
Student thesis
Abstract [en]
Background: Burglary is part of a large category of property crimes, and it is the most common type of burglary in Sundsvall. Previous research with an environmental focus has been conducted mainly on residential burglary. With an environmental focus, we aimed to see if the same environmental factors that have been shown to affect residential burglary also have an effect on auto burglary as well. The factors found in previous research on residential burglary was visibility, obstructing objects, and escapability. The Situational Crime Prevention Theory (SCPT) is an offense based criminological theory with several dimensions; effort required to carry out an offense, perceived risks of detection, rewards to be gained from the crime, and excuses and neutralizations. This theory was deductively applied to the results. Method: With a statistical file acquired from the police in Sundsvall, we identified three hot spots having the largest amount of reported burglaries between 2010-01-01 and 2016-03-06. The study was conducted with ethnography in the form of observational analysis on each of the exposed areas, to find potential risk factors, and problem-centered interviews aimed at strengthening the results from the observation. Results: The findings from the observation study and the interviews were consistent with each other. According to our findings, visibility was the factor that had the biggest impact on auto burglary, followed by obstructing objects and escapability.Conclusion: The environment has a big impact on the risk of burglary. Visibility is a protective factor, and obstructing objects and escapability are risk factors. The findings are more or less consistent with previous studies.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2016. , p. 74
Keywords [en]
Vehicles, burglary, environmental factors, risk assessment
National Category
Social Sciences
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:miun:diva-29180OAI: oai:DiVA.org:miun-29180DiVA, id: diva2:1044212
Subject / course
Criminology KR1
Educational program
Criminology Programme SKRIG 180 higher education credits
Supervisors
Examiners
Note
2016-10-17
2016-11-022016-11-022016-11-02Bibliographically approved