His formal education includes a BSc and BSocSci at the University of Pretoria and an MSc cum laude in Geographical Information Science (GIS) from the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU) in The Netherlands. Prof Breetzke received his PhD at the University of Pretoria in 2008, with a specialization in geodemographic offender profiling. His research interests include analysing the spatial-temporal patterns and trends of offender origins and crime incident locations. Other current interests include the development of indigenous theories of crime as well as examining crime as a development issue.