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Behavioral Consistency Among Serial Burglars: Evaluating Offense Style Specialization Using Three Analytical Approaches

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This study evaluates the behavioral consistency in offending styles among a sample of serial burglars from the United States. Three popular specialization analyses—Jaccard’s coefficient, the forward specialization coefficient (FSC), and the Diversity (D) index—are used to compare if, and how much, variation exists in the behavior of serial burglars committing different styles of offenses, among the three analyses. Results show that there is variation across the analyses, with the FSC and D index suggesting serial burglars are relatively consistent in their burglary offense styles. However, burglars with organized and disorganized offense styles are more consistent in behavior across offenses than burglars who committed opportunistic and interpersonal style offenses. These findings have important methodological implications for criminological research, and practical implications for policing and crime linkage analysis.
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... Asimismo, los delincuentes condenados por posesión y tráfico de drogas son propensos a presentar condenas previas por ofensas como robo (Motiuk & Vuong, 2001). Parece existir un vínculo entre la compraventa de drogas y el hurto (Caputo & King, 2011;Fox, 2015;Fox & Farrington, 2014;Francis et al., 2010). ...
... En el cultivo de marihuana, lo son las ofensas vinculadas con el cultivo (Bouchard, 2007). Por otro lado, en el tráfico de drogas, son usuales los antecedentes por robo (Caputo & King, 2011;Fox, 2015;Fox & Farrington, 2014;Francis et al., 2010;Motiuk & Vuong, 2001). De hecho, en el presente estudio, de la muestra con antecedentes, más de la mitad de estos se vinculan con delitos contra el patrimonio. ...
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