The Study of Delinquency Areas: A Social Geographical Approach

Abstract

Geographical interest in forms of social deviance is of comparatively recent origin, despite the fact that the relevance of spatial qualities has long been recognized. The concept of delinquency area remains a viable part of the literature and deserves closer attention by social geographers. Although analyses at the aggregate scale, based upon published statistics, remain valid and have considerable potential, there is a need to form new research strategies which both conduct analyses at the individual scale and improve the quality of data. Such a research strategy has been developed in a study of Cardiff and a set of research hypotheses relating to area differences, primarily in terms of attitudes and forms of behaviour, are tested. Results suggest that area differences exist and that the social geographical perspective is highly relevant to research in this field. A RESEARCH interest by professional geographers in the field of deviance studies is of comparatively recent origin,1 despite the fact that other disciplines have often recognized the relevance of spatial factors. Definitions of social deviance refer to normative rules for behaviour which in some ways have been infringed.2 Whilst social deviance is a generic term and there is little case for ignoring its typologies, there are grounds for recognizing broad bases of similarity and the fact that specific forms of deviance are subsets of the whole to which common methodologies and conceptual frameworks may apply. Juvenile delinquency is a particular form of social deviance which involves the transgression of societal laws by young offenders;3 it is itself capable of further differentiation by parameters such as degree of seriousness of the offence. Most analyses of crime and delinquency rest upon official sources of data, the reliability and comprehensiveness of which have been the subject of considerable debate.4 Whatever their merits, these data sets provide the only sources of statistics and have to form the bases of much research. A recent research project in Cardiff has considered the spatial qualities of delinquent behaviour on several fronts.s Access to data from several official sources allowed the calculation of delinquency rates for small areas of the city and these have formed a basis for study of areal and ecological characteristics. The emphasis in this particular paper is upon that part of the overall project in which an attempt was made to advance beyond the established strategies of quantitative analyses of aggregate statistics in order to demonstrate how attitudes and forms of behaviour could be studied in the context of social geographical research. This has involved the establishment of an area sampling framework from which survey areas were selected for detailed investigation.6 Whilst the procedure is not novel and is soundly based in geographical literature,7 its application in this context has innovative qualities. The paper considers the ecological tradition in crimihology, discusses the possibilities of a behavioural approach, develops the particular research strategy employed with the related research hypotheses, and evaluates the results from the survey of selected areas in Cardiff. THE ECOLOGICAL TRADITION IN CRIMINOLOGY The fact that crime and delinquency display marked areal and ecological characteristics, in common with many other forms of social deviance, has been recognized for some considerable