Abstract
The daily rhythms of the city, the ebb and flow of people undertaking routines activities, inform the spatial and temporal patterning of crime. Being able to capture citizen mobility and delineate a crime-specific population denominator is a vital prerequisite of the endeavour to both explain and address crime. This paper introduces the concept of an exposed population-at-risk, defined as the mix of residents and non-residents who may play an active role as an offender, victim or guardian in a specific crime type, present in a spatial unit at a given time. This definition is deployed to determine the exposed population-at-risk for violent crime, associated with the night-time economy, in public spaces. Through integrating census data with mobile phone data and utilising fine-grained temporal and spatial violent crime data, the paper demonstrates the value of deploying an exposed (over an ambient) population-at-risk denominator to determine violent crime in public space hotspots on Saturday nights in Greater Manchester (UK). In doing so, the paper illuminates that as violent crime in public space rises, over the course of a Saturday evening, the exposed population-at-risk falls, implying a shifting propensity of the exposed population-at-risk to perform active roles as offenders, victims and/or guardians. The paper concludes with a discussion of the theoretical and policy relevance of these findings.
Highlights
Crime rate denominators require being calculated with reference to specific crime types (Boggs 1965) and with sensitivity to the temporal and spatial patterning of crime arising from the daily rhythms of city, the ebb and flow of people undertaking routine activities
In advance of previous studies, and informed by routine activities theory (Cohen and Felson 1979), this paper introduces the concept of an exposed population-at-risk, defined as the mix of residents and non-residents who may play an active role as an offender, victim or guardian in a specific crime type, present in a spatial unit at a given time
It is logical to conclude that the qualities of the people present and of the setting itself will hold influence on the likelihood that the roles of motivated offender, target and guardian will be performed, dependent on the crime type under investigation. It is in these terms that we propose the adoption of an exposed population-at-risk measure defined, with reference to routine activities theory (Cohen and Felson 1979), as the mix of residents and non-residents who may play an active role as an offender, victim or guardian in a specific crime type, present in a spatial unit at a given time
Summary
Crime rate denominators require being calculated with reference to specific crime types (Boggs 1965) and with sensitivity to the temporal and spatial patterning of crime arising from the daily rhythms of city, the ebb and flow of people undertaking routine activities. Examining violent crime, associated with the night-time economy (NTE), in public space and on Saturday evenings in Greater Manchester (UK), we evaluate the value of employing an exposed population-at-risk measure in contrast to an ambient population-at-risk measure (Andresen 2011) in identifying crime hotspots. The population present in a spatial unit at a given time is the product of the daily rhythms of the city, the ebb and flow of people undertaking routine activities, providing a pool of motivated offenders, targets (victims) and guardians (Boivin 2018; Cohen and Felson 1979). Being able to measure population flows, their influence upon the population size of a spatial unit at a given time is
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