Muggings more than double in London after dark

(Press-News.org) Contact information: Katie Baker
katie.baker@sagepub.co.uk
020-732-48719
SAGE Publications
Muggings more than double in London after dark Muggers in London strike around two and half times more often during hours of darkness then in daylight, a new study shows.

The first study to look at the hourly pattern of street robbery in London found a 160% rise in the rate of muggings during the hours of darkness in the capital.

Lisa Tompson and Professor Kate Bowers, from the Department of Security and Crime, University College London, studied crime statistics over two years in order to calculate how much more at risk people were in darkness, even when they were in urban areas which often had street lighting.

Although researchers expected to find a rise in street robberies in darkness, the study is the first to calculate its precise extent.

The researchers examined 6,511 street robberies in Camden and Islington police areas during 2002 and 2003 for their analysis, published in the Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency.

They also looked at 4,200 muggings in the Strathclyde Police region in Scotland, which includes Glasgow. There they found that darkness increased the rate of street robberies by 20%, a smaller figure than in London, which the researchers suggest might be because it is often too cold at night for robbers and potential victims to be outside.

"Darkness was significantly associated with an increase in the expected number of street robberies," the researchers say in their paper. "This result held over both study areas that have differing levels of darkness throughout the year.

"It is also interesting to note that the effects of darkness were more pronounced in London than in Glasgow. One reason for this might be variation in the comfort of the external conditions: the temperatures can become very cold at times in Glasgow and that it is more likely to rain in this area. Perhaps on occasion, more extreme conditions limit the number of suitable targets and offenders on the street."

The researchers also found that London street robberies rose by around 1% for each one degree Celsius the temperature rose, independently of how much daylight there was.

The research has been flagged up by the Campaign for Social Science as significant for helping understand crime patterns.

### The paper is entitled: 'A Stab in the Dark? A Research Note on Temporal Patterns of Street Robbery' and the journal is published by SAGE.

For more information, please contact: Tony Trueman
Press Officer, Campaign for Social Science/ Academy of Social Science
07964 023392
t.trueman@acss.org.uk
twitter: @CfSocialScience
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web: http://www.campaignforsocialscience.org.uk

Notes: 1. An online version of this article can be found at: http://jrc.sagepub.com/content/early/2012/12/20/0022427812469114 (log-in needed for full paper)

2. Part of the Campaign for Social Science's role is to promote important social science research. It has no direct role as funder or partner in the current research. The Campaign is supported by 78 institutions, including universities, learned societies, publishers and a charitable trust. It receives no state funding. http://www.campaignforsocialscience.org.uk

3. Founded in 1826, UCL was the first English university established after Oxford and Cambridge, the first to admit students regardless of race, class, religion or gender and the first to provide systematic teaching of law, architecture and medicine. We are among the world's top universities, as reflected by our performance in a range of international rankings and tables. According to the Thomson Scientific Citation Index, UCL is the second most highly cited European university and the 15th most highly cited in the world. UCL has nearly 27,000 students from 150 countries and more than 9,000 employees, of whom one third are from outside the UK. The university is based in Bloomsbury in the heart of London, but also has two international campuses – UCL Australia and UCL Qatar. Our annual income is more than £800 million.