Places acquire reputations among offenders for reliable opportunities, and then draw offenders who travel to them deliberately.
An attractor differs from a generator in the direction of the causation: the offender comes because of what is known to be available, rather than happening to be among a crowd. The Brantinghams' point is that the same high-crime count can arise from either, and treating the wrong one wastes the intervention.
In practice
- A car park with a known weakness fills with offenders from other districts, and lighting the crowd does nothing.
- A market known for handling stolen goods draws sellers who pass several closer markets to reach it.
- Possible explanations
- The explanation is reputation among offenders: a place known to offer reliable opportunity draws people who travel to it, which is a different process from a crowd generating opportunity incidentally.
- In its favour
- The distinction is useful for policing, since an attractor responds to changing what is available there while a generator responds to managing the flow of people, and journey-to-crime data support the idea that some offenders travel deliberately.
- Against it
- Telling an attractor from a generator in a given case is difficult, since both produce high counts, and the classification is usually made after the fact from the pattern it is meant to explain.
- Standing
- Distinguishing an attractor from a generator in a given case is difficult, since both produce high counts, and the classification usually rests on inference about offender intent.
- Subject
- Law & Politics
- Essay
- Competing accounts of how power works