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Precursor Events of Sex Crimes in Japan: A Spatio-Temporal Analysis of Reports of Contacts with Suspicious Persons by Target Age Groups

George Kikuchi

California State University, United States of America

Abstract:

Japanese police agencies treat reports of contacts with suspicious persons as precursor events of more serious sex crimes despite the absence of empirical studies causally linking the two phenomena. Data on sex crimes (N = 599) and suspicious person reports (N = 1,396) from a large police department were statistically analyzed to examine space-time clustering of the two phenomena. The results confirmed the presence of space-time clustering, although the pattern of elevated sex crime risks varied with the target characteristics. In particular, while areas within 250 meters of the location of a suspicious person incident targeting the group teenagers or older were at a significantly higher risk of a sex crime for a period of two weeks, suspicious person incidents targeting the group elementary school children or younger were not associated with future occurrences of sex crimes. The practical implications and limitations of the current study are discussed.

Keyword:

Sex crimes; Spatio-temporal analysis; Near repeat victimizations.