Sentinel conditions: estimating risk of residential burglary victimization using socio-economic proxies

Sentinel indicators, regularly applied within the fields of biology, ecology and remote sensing, act as proxies to measure environmental phenomena that are difficult to assess directly. The well-developed sentinel framework can be adapted for use within a crime analysis setting, identifying the relative risk of residential burglary victimization without relying on the crime occurrence data alone. By selecting and combining theory-supported social and economic factors known to relate to the existence of residential burglary, the resulting sentinel layer estimates the geographic patterning of risk of victimization throughout select municipalities in British Columbia. Additional adjustments made to this model expand its geographic applicability, allowing for estimations of relative risk of residential burglary victimization across a wider range of urban areas. In doing so, this methodology increases the understanding of how the relationship between theory-supported socio-economic conditions and residential burglary changes across different urban landscapes.