It is commonplace in social sciences to view each and every crime as having a unique origin in the individual life history of offenders. To the extent that there are generalizations to be made about crime and crime patterns they are often portrayed as arising in the structural asymmetries of modern society, that deep divisions of race and socio-economic status play a leading role in driving people to offend. In other words, crime and inequality are thought to be intricately linked. Might there also be deeper regularities in human behavior that cross-cut these divisions and prove to be fundamental causes of crime? Here we explore a class of stochastic models drawn from seismology which suggest that there are regularities to the temporal spatial patterning of crime that are universal, both across neighborhoods and across crime types. A universal set of crime prevention strategies could be developed around these universal crime processes. Crime dynamics and crime prevention may be equal opportunity processes.
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