Measuring a Place’s Exposure to Facilities Using Geoprocessing Models: An Illustration Using Drinking Places and Crime

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The prominent role of facilities in influencing ‘why crime happens where it does’ has been widely recognized and vigorously researched. Criminological theories which focus on opportunity such as routine activity theory and crime pattern theory have provided the basis for such inquiries. Some of these investigations have targeted the role of facilities in fueling higher crime levels at places. They have usually developed facility-focused measures that quantify each facility’s influence based on the crime experienced by the places located near it. Measures are calculated only at the locations with facilities present. However, improvements in data sources and software have allowed researchers to examine the population of small units of geography rather than focusing on only those with a facility present. Thus it is now possible to quantify the cumulative effect of nearby facilities on the crime rates of geographies of such street blocks and addresses. This chapter begins by discussing the traditional methods for exploring the relationship between facilities and crime. Next, the theoretical case for more sophisticated distance and activity-level based measures is made. The critical role of geoprocessing models in automating complex analysis processes is explained and a model developed to create three different exposure measures. Data describing the locations of drinking places and street block level crime are used to illustrate how measures produced by the model can be used to explore the relationships between exposure to facilities and an outcome such as crime. The output measures from the model are evaluated using descriptive statistics and then used as independent variables in an ordinary least squares regression. Local variation in the measures is examined using a bivariate LISA to highlight areas of negative and positive spatial autocorrelation between exposure to bars and crime. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the implications of the findings and probable next steps.