In and Around: Identifying Predictors of Theft within and Near to Major Mass Underground Transit Systems

This study analyses theft of personal property offences on the London Underground (LU). This major mass transit system carries over 1,000 million passenger per year, and experienced 5,063 theft offences in financial year 2011/2012 (BTP, 2013). Whilst this represents a rate of only four thefts per million passenger journeys, theft is a key offence type on the LU. Indeed, as a proportion of all offences, over half were for theft. This chapter examines a specific type of theft offence, what Smith (2008) termed stealth crimes, for example, pickpocketing. It excludes snatching and other theft types. For these stealth offences, victims are often unaware items are stolen, only discovering them missing at a later date, on transit journeys usually somewhere else on the transit line. As the location of many of these thefts is unknown, an innovative methodology is used to better estimate the locations of theft on transit stations. This is termed Interstitial Crime Analysis (ICA) and is described in detail by Newton et al. (2014).