The Criminology of Place: Key Contributions and Commentary

Abstract

The Criminology of Place grew out of research program funded by the National Institute of Justice (USA) supporting a retrospective longitudinal data collection at the micro-geographic level.1 This work in turn was a continuation of a research program, also supported by the National Institute of Justice that was the first longitudinal study of crime at micro-geographic places.2 While study of crime at place had begun to develop in the late 1980s,3 and its policy implications began to be examined in the 1990s,4 the 2004 Criminology article published by Weisburd and colleagues, staked out new ground and raised key new questions for this emerging area of study.5 Looking at crime over 14 years in Seattle, Washington, Weisburd, Bushway, Lum and Yang, showed that there were specific developmental patterns of crime at street segments in a city. One pattern, including just 1 percent of the streets, had persistently high rates of crime, and included some 23 per cent of crime during the study period. These were termed chronic crime hot spots, and they showed that crime was “coupled” to places in ways that challenged the traditional view that crime moved simply from place to place in the city. They also found that most streets in the city had little or no crime, and the crime drop in Seattle (following crime declines in other cities during the study period) was created by a small proportion of the city streets. Perhaps as important they found that some streets had “crime waves” during the study period, suggesting that speaking about city crime rates overall, masks deeply divergent trends across the city.6