When is crime most likely to happen

Almost all violent crime is committed by men. Living in an urban area - The majority of crime happens in cities, particularly in city centres at weekends or in areas with poorer quality housing. Who is affected by crime? The Scottish Crime and Justice Survey shows: - When and where crime happens 45 per cent of all property crimes took place immediately outside the home.

Among adults, simple assault is most common in the summer — just like any other sort of violent crime. But teens are actually safest in summer, when they're out of school. It's when they get back to the classroom in the fall that they're most at risk for simple assault.

It might make sense that, if summer is the most dangerous season for crime, spring might be the second-most dangerous. But that's not the case at all. Most types of crime are more likely to happen in fall than they are in spring, and spring crime rates are similar to winter ones for many crimes.

In fact, in some cases, spring is the safest time of the year. Your car, for example, is less likely to be broken into in spring than at any other time. There's no peak season for car theft, but thefts are substantially less common in spring than they are in other seasons. Interestingly, the one kind of violent crime that didn't follow any kind of seasonal pattern was robbery. Robbery rates fluctuate from season to season, but they don't follow any sort of regular seasonal cycle: overall, the rates are "statistically similar during winter, spring, summer, and fall," the researchers write.

Rape and sexual assault do follow a seasonal pattern — but, statistically speaking, there's no "single peak season" for rape. The researchers found that there wasn't a big difference between summer the highest rate and spring the second-highest , or a big difference between spring, fall, and winter. As you can see, once you throw out the hours of a. Contrast that with robberies. These are clearly crimes of opportunity: You rob someone with a fair bit of premeditation, and your chief concern is not getting caught.

Ergo, robberies usually happen during the day, with peak reporting at about 5 p. Why then? Of course, the one exception seems to be Philadelphia, where people get robbed all the time , no matter if the streets are busy, people are home, or whatever. That seems baffling until you think about it a little. In its annual survey, BJS asks crime victims whether they reported their crime to police or not. In , only Most of the crimes that are reported to police, meanwhile, are not solved , at least based on an FBI measure known as the clearance rate.

In , police nationwide cleared Both the percentage of crimes that are reported to police and the percentage that are solved have remained relatively stable for decades. Around eight-in-ten motor vehicle thefts Around half Among violent crimes, aggravated assault was the most likely to be reported to law enforcement It was followed by robbery The list of crimes cleared by police in looks different from the list of crimes reported.

Law enforcement officers were generally much more likely to solve violent crimes than property crimes, according to the FBI. The most frequently solved violent crime tends to be homicide. Police cleared around six-in-ten murders and non-negligent manslaughters The clearance rate was lower for aggravated assault When it comes to property crime, law enforcement agencies cleared The FBI has long recognized the limitations of its current data collection system and is planning to fully transition to a more comprehensive system beginning in The new system, known as the National Incident-Based Reporting System NIBRS , will provide information on a much larger number of crimes , as well as details such as the time of day, location and types of weapons involved, if applicable.