Most journey-to-crime studies are flawed in two ways: they predominantly rely on local police data and although a number of studies hint at the presence of substantially longer crime trips than commonly reported, long trips are deliberately removed from further analysis. Consequently, the scope of the conclusions of current journey-to-crime studies is limited to local offending and their empirical design is biased towards finding short trips. This paper substantiates the need for dedicated criminological research into long crime trips and provides an initial insight into journey-to-crime distances in the greater Ghent area, Belgium. By analyzing 5 year public prosecutor data on property crimes from the greater Ghent area, the length of the journey to crime and the number of long crime trips is assessed. Findings demonstrate a substantial amount of long crime trips with 35% of crime trips over 10 km. The criminological implications for future journey-to-crime research are discussed
