This makes sense:
In the land of fiction, it’s the criminal’s modus operandi – his method of entry, his taste for certain jewellery and so forth – that can be used by detectives to identify his handiwork. The reality according to a new analysis of solved burglaries in the Northamptonshire region of England is that these aspects of criminal behaviour are on their own unreliable as identifying markers, most likely because they are dictated by circumstances rather than the criminal’s taste and style. However, the geographical spread and timing of a burglar’s crimes are distinctive, and could help with police investigations.
And, as a bonus, more Tourette’s pride!
P.S. On yet another unrelated topic from the same blog, I wonder if the researchers in this study are aware that the difference between “significant” and “not significant” is not itself statistically significant.
Re "Tourette's pride", you may know that U.S. goalkeeper Tim Howard has Tourettes. Howard plays for an English team, where he is much appreciated (at least until he makes a key mistake in a major game). The team's fans have a cheer that obliquely references the fact that Howard has Tourette's syndrome: when he makes a great save, they sing
Tim Timminy,
Tim Timminy
Tim Tim, Terroo,
We've got Tim Howard
and he says
F**K You!
(Howard doesn't actually curse involuntarily).
Actually it's not entirely clear to me that this is a Tourette's reference at all, the cheer seems appropriate (at least in the ouvre of English soccer cheers) for any goalie. It reminds me a bit of a few years ago, when Dennis Bergkamp used to play in the same league. To the "tune" of nyaa-nyaa-nyaa-nyaa-NYAA-nyaa, when Bergkamp scored a goal the fans would chant "We've got Dennis BERGkamp, we've got Dennis BERGkamp."
Those English soccer fans, they're a fun bunch when they're not bashing people's heads in and throwing bricks through car windows.
This burglary study seems suspicious to me but perhaps someone can allay my fears. The study is of crimes in a single area Northhamptonshire which according to the wikipedia article is irregularly shaped and includes one of the shortest county borders in England the 21 yard border with Lincolnshire. It seems that because these were 80 pairs of burglaries occurring in this one county, something is going to be stilted by the geometry of the geography. For if a burglar who spaced his burglaries geographically so that they were on average no closer to each other than to others' burglaries, still the pair that would get studied would be the ones that occurred within the borders of the county– thus being those perhaps on the closer side, because the farther apart burglaries that bring the average up would be outside the borders. Does this make sense? But precisely because this geographic space may be smaller than the particular burglar's average, likewise the time between the two would be smaller. Also since the study was of pairs of burglaries by different burglars within this limited space each pair would have to be within the borders and a burglar who committed two burglaries far enough apart spatially so that the second burglary wasn't in Northhamptonshire wouldn't even make it into the study.
There's a major difference between England and America in how far burglars and home invaders will go to break into a home. Consider the horrific rural home invasion scene carried out by Alex and his droogs in Anthony Burgess's 1962 novel "A Clockwork Orange." That's representative of a pattern in which urban English criminals will drive up to a 100 miles into the country to break into remote rural homes.
In contrast, there are towns only 50 miles northwest of South-Central LA right on major freeways, such as Thousand Oaks, that have among the lowest crime rates in the country.
Phil: Yes, I read that article. It was great.
As a British resident and home-sharer I am a bit puzzled on why Steve Sailer appears to regard something in a deliberately shocking novel as evidence of how things are done in "England", whatever that is precisely. From merely living there, I assert that remote rural homes in Britain are about as safe as anywhere else.
"I assert that remote rural homes in Britain are about as safe as anywhere else."
Try looking up the statistics.
Well, Steve, first a work of fiction counts as evidence for you and then it's "statistics" which you don't detail or reference. I suppose that's progress in debate.