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Five Areas of Research

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LOCATION SPECIFIC VERSUS AREA SPECIFIC. Law suits in our civil courts ... Variation by age, race, sex and crime type. Young offenders. travel shorter distances ... – PowerPoint PPT presentation

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Title: Five Areas of Research


1
Five Areas of Research
  • The high concentration of crime at some addresses
    and the absence of crime at others
  • The preventive effects of various place features
  • The mobility of offenders
  • Studies of how offenders select targets
  • LOCATION SPECIFIC VERSUS AREA SPECIFIC

2
  • Law suits in our civil courts
  • Against property owners
  • Should a shopping center be sued by a mugging
    victim for inadequate lighting.?
  • Protests against magnets for criminals and
    crime
  • Drinking establishments
  • Sex shops
  • 24-hour stores
  • Police programs start to focus on where crimes
    happen rather than the offenders
  • Studies show that crime is concentrated at
    specific places even within neighborhoods that
    have high crime rates.

3
  • Chicago School of Sociology (1920s) crime and
    the environment at regional scales
  • Was the scale detailed enough????
  • Large scale mapping and analysis
  • Parking lots, local bars, etc
  • Can you give an example???
  • Distinction between site and local neighborhood
  • THE CRIMINOLOGY OF PLACE

4
  • Chicago researchers
  • Find crime to be correlated with poverty and a
    lack of social control associated with place
  • Violence (e.g., homicide) to be correlated with
    their measure of social disorganization.
  • Gangs .. Areas are low on a variety of measures
    of informal social control and share features
    associated with the underclass.

5
  • Areas with a high incidence of prostitution were
    notable in their absence of young children and
    young women
  • Also these areas have households likely to be
    made up of single adults and unrelated roommates.
  • AGAIN A FOCUS ON THE ENVIRONMENT NOT THE OFFENDER
    OR PLACE

6
Crime Places Crime Theory
  • Two approaches
  • Criminal offenders
  • Criminal events.
  • Criminal Offenders
  • Explaining why they are criminals
  • Trying to predict their criminal behavior
  • This approach leads to many explanations
  • BUT???

7
Crime Places Crime Theory
  • Criminal Events
  • Why certain targets are selected by offenders
  • Why some targets are attractive and others are
    repellent.
  • Examples??
  • Event prevention strategies SUCH AS???

8
Crime Places Crime Theory
  • Criminal Events Three Perspectives (Theory?)
  • Rational choice
  • Routine activity theory
  • Crime pattern theory
  • Rational Choice
  • Offenders will select targets and define means to
    achieve their goals in a manner that can be
    explained
  • Example

9
Crime Places Crime Theory
  • Routine Activity
  • Conditions
  • Motivated Offender
  • Desirable Target
  • Target and offender in same place at the same
    time
  • Controllers such as intimate handlers , guardians
    and place managersmust be absent or ineffective.
    FOR THE OFFENDER AND THE TARGET
  • EXAMPLE?

10
Crime Places Crime Theory
  • Crime Pattern Theory
  • Pattern theory explores the interactions of
    offenders with their physical and social
    environments that influence offenders' choices of
    targets.
  • How could a physical local influence choices?
  • How could a social environment influence choices?
  • How targets come to the attention of offenders
    influences the distribution of crime events over
    time, space, and among targets. ACTIVITY SPACES

11
Simple Personal Geography
  • Awareness space . Those areas of which one is
    aware How do we define this for ourselves?
  • Activity space those areas of daily activity
  • To work , to school, to recreation
  • Cognitive images of place
  • It is a safe target.. Will they recognize me

12
Crime Places Crime Theory
  • Crime Pattern Theory
  • They search in areas they know.. Day to day
    activity spaces
  • How does this impact patterns?
  • Characteristics of place impact the possibility
    of crime

13
Facilities and Crime
  • Target facilities
  • Location
  • Lack of controls
  • What else?
  • Measures of Opportunity?
  • Bar seats in a neighborhood vs of Bars
  • Is it the bar or the people that go there or
    both?
  • Places that attract more people have more victims

14
Clustering
  • Multiple crimes at the same location
  • Example?
  • Opportunity and lack of controls
  • HOTSPOTS
  • Does the social structure of places influence
    the offender's decision to go there
  • Or whether the social structure influences
    behavior once the offender is at the place.
  • CHICKEN OR EGG PROBLEM

15
Site Features
  • Places with high crime
  • Is it because other criminals are there?
  • Is it because of a lack of social control?
  • Are there place features that attract criminals?
  • Defensible space Newmans housing study
  • The physical environment and a sense of place
  • A sense of territoriality helped by the design

16
Site Features
  • Convenience marts???
  • Research says it is an issue of physical
    features
  • Unobstructed windows
  • Placement of the cash register so that the
    entrance can be monitored
  • Lighted parking areas fully visible from inside
    the store

17
Site Features
  • The value of access control features for
    controlling crime depends on the crime.
  • Cocaine dealers may prefer apartment buildings
    with physical features that control access.
  • The features that may prevent burglary may
    attract drug dealing.

18
Site Features
  • Making targets less accessible
  • Example???
  • How places are managed may impact the
    desirability of the target
  • Example????
  • Bars

19
Offender Mobility
  • How far will an offender travel to commit a
    crime?
  • DISTANCE AND DIRECTION
  • Connect the crime location to the residence
  • A simple distance decay function
  • The greater the distance the less chance of crime
  • Local areas avoided why?
  • Territoriality of drug dealers???

20
Offender Mobility
  • Variation by age, race, sex and crime type
  • Young offenders
  • travel shorter distances
  • African Americans
  • travel shorter distances
  • Women may travel
  • further than men
  • Expressive crimes (rape and assault)???
  • More local

21
Offender Mobility
  • Variation by age, race, sex and crime type
  • Commercial robbery
  • Further away why?
  • Burglary
  • Not as far away
  • Drug dealers
  • Often in their home or local neighborhood

22
Targeting
  • Rational and deliberative target-searching
    behavior
  • Offenders seek attractive targets with low
    guardianship Example???
  • Offenders chance upon opportunities while engaged
    in routine non-criminal activity .. Example?
  • Cognitive maps may be incomplete.. Areas they
    pass over or by but are unfamiliar with.

23
Targeting
  • Offenders appear rational
  • Burglars look for low risk targets and high gain
  • Planning is limited and experienced offenders
    plan even less
  • Targets are often found during routine day to day
    behaviors .. Such as?

24
Displacement
  • What is it???
  • Spatial displacement
  • Does it OR does it not happen researchers
    debate
  • Crime volume may be based on
  • The number of suitable targets
  • The number of capable guardians
  • NOT just the number of likely offenders

25
Displacement
  • Some argue that displacement is minimal
  • Example.. Drug sale corners describe
  • Example.. Prostitution corners describe
  • Example.. Muggings describe
  • The degree of displacement may be highly related
    to the try of crime being analyzed
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