Making Space for Theory: The Challenges of Theorizing Space and Place for Spatial Analysis in Criminology

Abstract

During the 1998 ASC Annual Meeting in Washington, DC Jacqueline Cohen and I (George Tita) approached then-editor of JQC Michael Maltz about our idea for a special issue pertaining to the spatial analysis of homicide. Having worked with a number of scholars as part of the National Consortium on Violence Research (NCOVR) Space and Time working group, we were convinced that the Journal of Quantitative Criminology was the right space for a collection of articles that employed spatial analysis in an attempt to describe and explain the recent youth homicide epidemic. It was also the right time--at the same moment a growing number of scholars began wrestling with explaining the spatial patterns of homicide, especially events involving minority males in urban centers, advances in both desk top mapping solutions (e.g., ESRI's ArcView, MapInfo) and statistical software such as Anselin's SpaceStat were making it much easier to conduct ecological studies of crime and violence. We were thril... Language: en