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20 • Justice Research and Policy <br />victims often come together as a result of their everyday activities (and by extension, <br />criminals could increase their odds of coming into such contact by manipulating <br />their activities), but places in the city could also promote such interaction. <br />Following the work by Felson, much of the research related to routine activi- <br />ties theory began to examine more specific locations and/or offender types (see, <br />for example, Sherman, Gartin, and Buerger, 1989, and Smith, Frazee, and Davison, <br />2000). While this line of research is related to the research at hand (for example, <br />Roncek and Maier [1991] found that increases in potential targets [in their case <br />bars and taverns] in residential areas can significantly increase the amount of <br />crime), no literature currently applies routine activities theory to child sex of- <br />fenders. This study attempts to begin to fill that void by arguing that child sex <br />offenders may put themselves in a position to come into contact with potential <br />victims and that some places may draw offenders and targets together. <br />*Methods <br />This research was spawned from a larger project that examined the characteristics <br />of all sex offenders in the state of Arkansas. For that project, the records of all sex <br />offenders registered with the state on February 1, 1999, (a total of 1,646) were col- <br />lected. These data were augmented by the criminal history records of the offenders. <br />For the project at hand, all the sex offenders in that database who had a <br />residency address in one metropolitan county (Pulaski County) were selected. <br />This county was chosen because it had the largest number of sex offenders of any <br />county in the state and, for the purposes of this project, it was the only county <br />that had been mapped sufficiently to be able to relate sex offender residences <br />with potential targets. Of the 1,646 sex offenders in the database, 252 were from <br />this county. Because of the nature of the targets selected for this analysis (areas <br />where a concentration of children were likely), this data set was further broken <br />down into offenders who had a child as a victim and those who did not. A total <br />of 170 offenders had a child as a victim. <br />The second set of data to be collected was the locations of the potential <br />target areas. We selected day cares, schools, and parks as the potential targets <br />based on legislation at the state and federal level that specifically identify schools, <br />playgrounds (parks), and day cares as areas of concern for criminal activities <br />such as gun possession, drug use, rehabilitation centers, and sex offenders. Fur- <br />thermore, we decided to use these targets because they represent areas where <br />typically there is a concentration of potential victims. <br />School districts within the county supplied the address of each primary and <br />secondary school. A total of 83 schools were identified in the county. The loca-