Chapter 4 - Apartment Security I: Measuring and Analyzing Crime Foreseeability

Abstract

This chapter draws on expert witness reports to illustrate the ways in which a forensic criminologist can use social science and criminological methods and theories to evaluate the foreseeability of crime in multifamily housing developments (apartments). We explain the usefulness of the major theoretical variants of environmental criminology: rational choice theory, crime prevention through environmental design (CPTED), routine activity theory, crime pattern theory, and situational crime prevention in explaining the connection between land-use activities, neighborhood characteristics, and crime. What unites these otherwise different and diverse theories is their concern with identifying the situational crime opportunities presented by particular places. Using examples of actual expert witness reports, we show how a forensic criminologist would draw on particular data sources and methods to assess the criminogenic nature of a neighborhood.