Asked half a century ago why he robbed banks, infamous "Slick" Willie Sutton is said to have replied, "Because that's where the money is."
But today's home invasion robberies defy Sutton's logic. Most in the Las Vegas Valley have occurred in the poorest neighborhoods, according to a Review-Journal analysis of crime and census data.
Middle-class neighborhoods farther from the valley's core have had relatively few home invasions, and exclusive master-planned communities such as Lake Las Vegas and Anthem have remained virtually untouched by the crime.
The data, criminologists say, contradict the widely held belief that violent home invaders typically prey on middle- and upper-class neighborhoods when searching for a score.
"You would think they would go where the money is, but research shows most will operate a short distance from where they live," said Carnegie Mellon University professor Alfred Blumstein, director of the Pittsburgh-based National Consortium on Violence Research and one of the nation's top crime experts.
"Most of the home invasion events you read about or see on television happen to middle-class or elderly folks, but I think that's a result of the selectivity of what the media finds interesting. But in fact, these are often acts of desperate individuals looking to get drug money or people who might feel out of place if they go to nice suburban areas where they might be more easily noticed as suspicious."
Crime zones
Home invasion, where robbers raid a home and hold its occupants captive while plundering it, is not a new crime. But it became a well-known form of robbery only in the late 1980s, police say.
Southern Nevada police agencies investigated at least 749 home invasions between January 2001 and mid-March. The crime accounts for only about 5 percent of all valley robberies in a year, with the number of home invasions growing at about the same rate as the region's population, according to the newspaper's analysis.
Nationwide comparisons are unavailable because the FBI and other entities that collect crime data do not separate statistics on home invasions from other types of robberies.
The analysis found that some 57 percent of all Southern Nevada home invasions between Jan. 1, 2001, and March 15, 2004, occurred in only eight of the valley's four dozen ZIP code districts: 89030, 89101, 89104, 89106, 89109, 89110, 89115 and 89121.
Those eight ZIP codes experienced 426 home invasions. Individually, they were the only ZIP codes where more than 30 home invasions were reported in the past three years.
The 89101 area, which includes much of downtown Las Vegas, had the most home invasions, with 89. North Las Vegas' 89030 zone, just north of 89101, was second with 73. The 89109 zone, which includes the Strip and its surrounding neighborhoods, was third with 58.
Meanwhile, the ZIP codes that include the tony Anthem development in Henderson and the more modest Centennial Hills community in the northwest valley each experienced three home invasions since Jan. 1, 2001.
During the same period, the postal zones that include Rhodes Ranch and McDonald Ranch in the southern valley each had one. The ZIP code that includes Lake Las Vegas, home to some of the Silver State's poshest pads, had yet to experience a single home invasion.
Neighborhood trends
Geographically, the eight postal zones with the most home invasions form an uninterrupted north-south swath through most of the valley's poorest residential areas, encompassing the Strip corridor, running through downtown Las Vegas and continuing into the neighborhoods west of Nellis Air Force Base.
Data from the 2000 U.S. Census show all but two of those ZIP codes had unemployment rates well above 5 percent while the rest of Clark County averaged about 4 percent.
Single-family homes in these areas sold on average from $103,000 (89030) to $147,000 (89121), while homes in ZIP codes with only a few home invasions since January 2001 typically sold for well above $200,000 last year, according to SalesTraq, a company tracking the local housing market.
The census data also show all but one of those eight ZIP codes had a poverty rate far above the Clark County average of 10.8 percent. In fact, three ZIP codes in the swath are the only ones where at least one in four people live under the poverty line, which the federal government defined at the time of the most recent census as a family of four with an income of $17,050 or less.
Sociologist Robert Bursik, who conducted a lengthy study that examined the relationship between crime and poverty in 74 Chicago neighborhoods over 20 years, wasn't surprised that home invasions were mostly likely to unfold in Southern Nevada's poorest neighborhoods.
But the University of Missouri, St. Louis professor said extensive research he has conducted found that poverty is not a direct cause of crime.
Bursik's 1995 study, "Economic Deprivation and Neighborhood Crime Rates," found an area's crime rate is more closely related to the level of "social disorganization."
"By that I mean that poor neighborhoods tend to be characterized by low levels of guardianship: People don't watch each other's property or keep an eye on each other's welfare," Bursik said. "If a neighborhood looks out of control with graffiti, abandoned homes, uncollected trash, that signals to an offender that this is a neighborhood where I can get away with something."
Temporary salve
Criminologist Terry Miethe, a criminal justice professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, said the eight ZIP code areas fit that description.
He added that local efforts at cleaning up these neighborhoods have led to temporary, superficial fixes.
As the best examples of this, Miethe pointed to two of the local neighborhoods most plagued by home invasions. One is West Las Vegas, an area generally bordered by Carey Avenue on the north, Bonanza Road on the south, Interstate 15 on the east and Rancho Drive on the west. Another is the area long known as Naked City, near the Strip and Sahara Avenue in the shadow of the Stratosphere.
To improve these two areas, the federal government began channeling $2.2 million in 1994 to the city of Las Vegas through the Executive Office of Weed & Seed. The grants would fund law enforcement efforts to "weed" out violent crime, gangs, drug trafficking and then "seed" the areas with social services and economic revitalization programs.
Naked City was rechristened "Meadows Village" as part of this improvement effort.
Gains lost
Police formed a task force with the FBI to suppress gangs, drugs and juvenile criminals in the neighborhoods, and authorized overtime pay to step up the number of officers patrolling in cruisers, on foot and on bikes. They eventually secured convictions against many of the worst drug dealers and gang members.
Meanwhile, other grant money went toward restoring dilapidated housing and funding programs promoting literacy, substance abuse prevention, children's after-school activities and bilingual education.
But when the federal funding dried up, the task force was dissolved, and the Metropolitan Police Department moved the bike patrol from Meadows Village to downtown.
"With Meadows Village and the Westside, there was a little good done, and then the money runs out and crime returned," Miethe said.
The federal government had a similarly bleak assessment.
"Gains were reversed because weeding was not sustained and seeding efforts never `took root,' " stated a 1999 National Institute of Justice case study report on Las Vegas.
"Metro went in there and won several awards for neighborhood crime prevention programs," Miethe said. "But as soon as police leave, those areas went back to being crime-prone areas, so it's not surprising you see all these home invasions there."
