
George F. RengertTemple University | TU · Department of Criminal Justice
George F. Rengert
PhD
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36
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Introduction
Skills and Expertise
Publications
Publications (36)
Over the last two decades, there has been increased interest in the distribution of crime and other antisocial behavior at lower levels of geography. The focus on micro geography and its contribution to the understanding and prevention of crime has been called the ‘criminology of place’. It pushes scholars to examine small geographic areas within c...
Marcus Felson’s intellectual mind is much like a shotgun blast. The pellets are all aimed in a general direction, most of them are on target and a few are dead-on in hitting the bull’s eye. The most important of those that hit their mark are his development of Routine Activities Theory (Cohen&Felson, 1979) and his integration of this theory with th...
Although recent work has begun to identify factors associated with risk of treatment attrition for juvenile offenders, few of these studies have considered how community context is related to the completion of juvenile offender treatment. The current work examines the relationship between social distance and treatment attrition for juvenile offende...
This chapter provides a discussion of the use of two different types of mapping tasks in offender interviews, namely sketch and cartographic maps. The methodological issues associated with their use are discussed and examples of their application in previous studies presented. To provide a more concrete example of how they may be used together to e...
There is a debate over whether police attention focused on an illegal drug market causes dealers to spatially displace their activities “around the corner” therefore having no positive impact on the aggregate level of illegal drug sales in the city. The alternative perspective is that focused police attention lowers the rate of illegal drug sales i...
When spatial analysis of crime is conducted, the analyst should not ignore the spatial units that data are aggregated into
and the impact of this choice on the interpretation of findings. Just as several independent variables are considered to determine
whether they have statistical significance, a consideration of multiple spatial units of analysi...
Research from property crime studies has identified a near-repeat phenomenon, where the risk of repeat burglary victimization is transmitted from a burgled location to nearby locations for a limited amount of time. This article explores the potential for near-repeat patterns to exist in another crime type, specifically the incidence of shootings. U...
Using epidemiological techniques for testing disease contagion, it has recently been found that in the wake of a residential burglary, the risk to nearby homes is temporarily elevated. This paper demonstrates the ubiquity of this phenomenon by analyzing space–time patterns of burglary in 10 areas, located in five different countries. While the prec...
This study reviewed the medical charts of 271 patients diagnosed with co-morbid mental health and substance-use disorders who were discharged from a hospital acute inpatient unit to various outpatient treatment programs in Philadelphia. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology and logistic regression modeling were employed to investigate the...
The “journey to crime,” or the study of the distance between an offender's residence and offense site, has been a subject of study within criminology for many years. Implications arising from such research touches the majority of criminological theories. An overriding conclusion from this line of research is that most crimes occur in relatively clo...
The geographic perspective argues that customers must be accessible to the drug market's location for an illegal drug market to be sustained. Previous research illustrates that geographic and economic principles are key explanatory variables of the locations of illegal drug markets. The current study explores this assumption through an examination...
This article investigates home attributes that attract residential burglars in choosing a target. These attributes are the location of the home, its physical appearance, demographic characteristics of the residents, and the security precautions present. The theoretical foundation of the empirical model is the criminal utility maximization behavior...
This article investigates home attributes that attract residential burglars in choosing a target. These attributes are the location of the home, its physical appearance, demographic characteristics of the residents, and the security precautions present. The theoretical foundation of the empirical model is the criminal utility maximization behavior...
Past research has established two important geographic principles concerning the retail sales of illegal drugs: (1) illegal drug markets tend to be spatially concentrated, and (2) the location and marketing characteristics of these markets will vary depending on whether the customers are local or regional. The present research will build on these p...
Research designed to test deterrence/rational choice theory has contributed much to the knowledge of sanction threats, and the extent to which they are used in individuals' decision-making processes. The accumulation of knowledge about such perceptions among active and incarcerated offenders has surfaced only in recent years. We identified and inte...
Preconceived notions can affect the job performance of com- munity service recruits. In this investigation, the knowledge and per- ception of relative safety of recruits being trained to patrol central Philadelphia are compared with actual locations and safety levels of these neighborhoods to determine which communities were not per- ceived accurat...
Auto theft is a major concern for cities attempting to revi- talize their centers. Tourists, shoppers and workers will avoid this region of the city if they think their property may be stolen. This re- search is an attempt to identify whether public and private facilities about which parked,cars are expected to be clustered at specific times of the...
Home surveys and ethnographic studies have demonstrated that alarms are effective in deterring intruders. Local police departments across North America, however, face significant difficulties in responding to ever-increasing false activations and in managing alarm registrations. Local, county, and state governments must know whether alarms create a...
This article is aimed at testing whether alarms provide net benefits to the community, including police departments, given the existing levels of false activations. Obviously, even if alarms do produce net benefits to the locality, it does not preclude current efforts to control and decrease false activations. This analysis will be beneficial to al...
The alarm industry has been estimated at 8-11 billion dollars in 1993. There are approximately 17 million alarms installed nationwide. The annual growth of installations has been 8 percent over the last five years. At the same time, the number of false activations per system is 1.1 to 1.4 per year, with 20 to 30 percent of police manpower devoted t...
The problem addressed in this analysis is whether « routine activi- ties » of drug dependent criminals are associated with the spatial concentration of crime committed by these criminals. This prob- lem is tested in a series of analyses including an investigation of the spatial pattern of the residential burglaries committed by drug dependent burgl...
Employing observation and deduction, the present study addressed the question of why some homes in a community are more likely targets for burglary. The period of observation spanned two-and-a-half years, in three Philadelphia suburbs. The townships differ in population density, distance from the city, and affluence. The deduced burglary model enta...
Spatial variation in crime rates generally has been attributed to differences in culture, economic status, and the social organization of communities. Rarely have policies and practices of criminal justice professionals been examined as causes of this variation. If these policies and practices do place citizens at a higher risk of victimization, a...
Drug use has always been with us. Pre-Columbian Indians used peyote and hallucinogenic mushrooms. Popular soft drinks such as Coca Cola contained cocaine until the beginning of this century. Drug use in one form or another is not new. What is new is the level of concern expressed by our citizens. The level of concern expressed by our citizens is hi...
This paper analyzes the utility maximization of a burglar who anticipates the revenue generated by his action along with the associated costs. The benefits are the value of the loot. Costs include the location of the home, the physical appearance, the demographic characteristics, and the security precautions present. When combined, they will either...