Street robbery and public bus stops: A case study of activity nodes and situational risk

Abstract

Existing scholarship suggests that crime concentrates in close proximity to public bus stop locations. However, the importance of particular combinations of crime generators and attractors in the proximate environment around public bus stops has not been empirically documented. Drawing on previous environmental criminology research, the current study uses conjunctive analysis of case configurations to address questions about interpersonal violence around bus stops and other activity nodes in the proximate environment in Henderson, Nevada. Findings reveal that street robberies are highly clustered within a relatively small number of environmental contexts that are defined by specific combinations of activity nodes. They also show that bus stops are more likely than any other activity node to be found across dominant situational profiles of robbery, and that the relative risk of robbery associated with the presence/absence of bus stops varies widely on the basis of specific combinations of other activity nodes.