Where Shootings Occur A Fieldwork Analysis of Urban Ground Floors, the Rez de Ville

Wildlife crime is a significant global problem that undermines efforts to protect the environment, applies immense pressure to often fragile social and cultural structures and deprives economies of wealth and the capacity of countries to achieve sustainable development goals. Wildlife poaching, referring to the illegal removal of flora or fauna, is the most common form of wildlife crime and often occurs from within the spatial boundaries of protected areas (PAs). People poach for a variety of reasons such as, traditional use, subsistence, recreational and commercial gain. The wide-ranging motivations held by individual poachers makes it a particularly complex problem for PA managers. The rise of poaching in recent times has been largely managed through traditional detect and deter strategies that place an emphasis on increasing the risk of prosecution, and sometimes death, for poaching. While enforcement remains a key component for managing poaching, applied in isolation it represents a relatively blunt instrument for eliciting compliance.The failure of current approaches to deal with the global poaching epidemic has led to a growing acknowledgement by both academics and practitioners for a need to improve our understating and management of wildlife crime problems. In pursuit of this agenda are a growing number of criminologists with an interest in wildlife crime from the field of environmental criminology. Applying traditional environmental criminological approaches to a variety of wildlife crime problems, these researchers are forging a foundation for the inclusion of social science in conservation management. Guided by this emerging field, the current research explores the utility of applying theories and methods from environmental criminology and crime analysis for understanding poaching in Australia’s Great Barrier Reef Marine Park (Great Barrier Reef Marine Park). The aim of this research project was to, a) explore the utility of applying environmental criminology and crime analysis techniques to build a better understanding of wildlife crime in general and illegal fishing in particular, and b) develop a process for designing effective compliance management strategies using the GBRMP in Australia as a case study.Using official compliance incident data provided by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, I examine recreational poaching in no-take Marine National Parks through the theoretical lens of environmental criminology. Each of the three empirical case studies herein apply established theoretical concepts from the field of environmental criminology to advance the understanding of motivated offenders, suitable places and vulnerable targets. The final case study, applies crime script analysis to these findings to formulate prevention-based strategies through a situational crime prevention framework.Ultimately, the objective of this research project was to explore how the theories of environmental criminology could be used to improve compliance management practice in PAs. The evidence provided within this thesis suggests that poaching exhibits similar patterns to those found in traditional forms of crime. Central to the formation of these patterns are the conditions of opportunity whereby motivated offenders converge with vulnerable targets at suitable places in the absence of capable guardians. Where opportunity is the key driver for poaching, environmental criminology offers PA managers with a wide ranging collection of prevention focused compliance strategies. By providing new knowledge, this thesis advances the agenda for examining wildlife crime problems through the theoretical lens of environmental criminology.

Environmental criminology has quickly become a widely recognized perspective on crime, providing an umbrella under which several theories find a home. One common theme among theories of environmental criminology is that they are a departure from traditional criminology. The tradition has concentrated on exploring crime from the sociological or psychological perspective, focusing on understanding criminality, or the sum of motivations, drives, pushes, and pulls driving an individual toward criminal behavior. Environmental criminologists, on the other hand, seek to understand and explore crime by focusing on the criminal event by concerning themselves more with the places, spaces, and objects that either facilitate or prevent a crime from occurring. Approaching crime from this point of view prompts the researcher to focus on the opportunity constructs for crime and the patterns in which crimes occur rather than social or psychological motivations. Quite literally, environmental criminology is a criminological perspective which, in many respects, considers the causes of crime to be highly related to the nature of the physical environment. That is to say that the very nature of neighborhoods, structures, and objects can have an impact on crime directed in them, at them, and around them.

Repeat victimization has been widely studied from the perspective of environmental criminology for several decades. During this period, criminologists have identified a set of repeat victimization premises that are observed for many crimes; however, it is unknown whether these premises are also valid for cybercrime. In this study we rely on more than 9 million Zone-H data records from 2010 to 2017 to test whether these premises apply for the cybercrime of website defacement. We show that the phenomenon of repeat victimization is also observed in defaced cyber places (i.e. websites). In particular, we found that repeats contributed little to crime rates, that repeats occurred even several years after the original incident, that they were committed disproportionately by prolific offenders, and that few offenders returned to victimize previous targets. The results suggest that some traditional premises of repeat victimization may also be valid for understanding cybercrime events such as website defacement, implying that environmental criminology theories also constitute a useful framework for cybercrime analysis. The implications of these results in terms of criminological theory, cybercrime prevention, and the limitations derived from the use of Zone-H data are discussed.

Crime within Arabic countries is significantly different from Western crime in type, frequency, and motivation. For example, motor vehicle theft (MVT) has constituted the largest proportion of property crime incidents in Saudi Arabia (SA) for decades. This is in stark contrast to Western countries where burglary and street theft dominate. Environmental criminology theories, such as routine activity theory and crime pattern theory, have the potential to help to investigate Arabic crime. However, there is no research that has sought to evaluate the validity of these theories within such a different cultural context. This article represents a first step in addressing this substantial research gap, taking MVT within SA as a case study. We evaluate previous MVT studies using an environmental criminology approach with a critical view to applying environmental criminology to an Arabic context. The article identifies a range of key features in SA that are different from typical Western contexts. These differences could limit the appropriateness of existing methodologies used to apply environmental criminology. The study also reveals that the methodologies associated with traditional environmental crime theory need adjusting more generally when working with MVT, not least to account for shifts in the location of opportunities for crime with time.

This chapter outlines how theories of environmental criminology can inform our understanding of maritime piracy and assesses empirically how the incidence of maritime piracy is influenced by opportunities created by a maritime setting. The chapter is organized into three sections. The first section after the introduction discusses different periods of piracy, spanning ancient times, the Middle Ages, and up to present day. While the factors contributing to piracy in each age vary, there is a common explanation for how piracy has been quashed: establishing effective place management in the maritime realm. The second section focuses on some key constructs in environmental criminology and illustrates how they operate in a maritime setting. The concluding section deals with patterns that have been observed in maritime piracy in recent times.

The principle of the state of law is undoubtedly one of the most important and essential principles for any state and democratic society. Its fullest realisation in everyday life is the best guarantee for the development of democracy as well as recognition and enforcement of citizensʼ fundamental rights and freedoms. To this end, the general principles of the rule of law today occupy a special place and are fixed explicitly in contemporary constitutions and democratic legislation. However, it should be borne in mind that the existence of the constitutional and legal framework is only a necessary premise for the rule of law. Equally important is the functioning of various control mechanisms for the implementation of constitutional and legal norms, and especially, the creation of a new mentality among both public officials and citizens expressed in the awareness to the needs for the implementation of these norms and in the reaction with legal and democratic means against their violation by anyone. The Balkan Peninsula represents great strategic importance, not only for the surrounding states but also for the criminal groups that interact in this region. Many Balkan states have been through and currently are in deep democratic transition and it is difficult to break away from their historical past. Although many law enforcement agencies in this region stand out for their professionalism, the impact of consecutive wars presents decisive factors for the triumph or failure of law enforcement institutions against various crimes in this European area. The last war was waged in Kosovo, which ceased in June 1999, has a significant importance in the increase of criminality in Kosovo. After 1999, due to poorly controlled borders, lack of legislation, creation of a new police, and the establishment of the justice system, many criminal groups from the field of narco-criminality took advantage of this situation by creating organized criminal networks for the purpose of trafficking narcotic substances and psychotropic substances from the country of origin, transiting through Kosovo, and continuing towards the country of destination which was in Western Europe. The current internal processes that Kosovo is facing are economic and social development, which are still far from regional and European development structures, which as a result of poverty and lack of perspective, for a significant part of Kosovan society, are resulting with a high crime rate. The geostrategic position of the Republic of Kosovo in the Balkans, as well as the created post-war conditions, enables various criminal groups to carry out organised crime activities. High levels of unemployment and poverty, high levels of corruption in state institutions, and lack of free movement outside Kosovo contribute to creating appropriate conditions for the development of criminality in general and organised crime in particular. In support of various analyses conducted during the research, is the author has noticed that the Republic of Kosovo, compared to EU countries, has a lower level of criminality, while compared to countries in the region where the criminality level is higher.

South Africa is crippled with high rates of crime. Examining factors that may build neighbourhood-level resilience to crime is central to reducing the poverty gap and lowering inequality particularly in impoverished communities. By drawing on theories from environmental criminology in this study we quantify and spatially locate resilient neighbourhoods in the township of Khayelitsha located on the urban periphery of Cape Town in South Africa. We then examine the extent to which access to various built environment factors in the township is stratified based on neighbourhood-level resiliency. Contrary to expectations we found that the most resilient neighbourhoods in Khayelitsha most often experience a decrease in access to a range of built environment factors. Explanations for these findings are provided in the context of a uniquely South African township setting.

Inappropriate use of antipsychotic medications in nursing homes is a growing public health concern. Residents exposed to higher levels of socioeconomic deprivation in the area around a nursing home may be currently exposed, or have a long history of exposure, to more noise pollution, higher crime rates, and have less opportunities to safely go outside the facility, which may contribute to psychological stress and increased risk of receiving antipsychotic medications inappropriately. However, it is unclear whether neighborhood deprivation is associated with use of inappropriate antipsychotic medications and whether this outcome is different by facility staffing levels. To evaluate whether reported inappropriate antipsychotic medication use differs in severely and less severely deprived neighborhoods, and whether these differences are modified by higher levels of total nurse staffing. This was a cross-sectional analysis of a national sample of nursing homes that linked across 3 national large-scale data sets for the year 2019. Analyses were conducted between April and June 2023. Neighborhood deprivation status (severe vs less severe) and total staffing hours (registered nurse, licensed practical nurse, certified nursing assistant). This study estimated the association between neighborhood deprivation and the percentage of long-stay residents who received an antipsychotic medication inappropriately in the nursing home at least once in the past week and how this varied by nursing home staffing through generalized estimating equations. Analyses were conducted on the facility level and adjusted for state fixed effects. This study included 10 966 nursing homes (1867 [17.0%] in severely deprived neighborhoods and 9099 [83.0%] in less deprived neighborhoods). Unadjusted inappropriate antipsychotic medication use was greater in nursing homes located in severely deprived neighborhoods (mean [SD], 15.9% [10.7%] of residents) than in those in less deprived neighborhoods (mean [SD], 14.2% [8.8%] of residents). In adjusted models, inappropriate antipsychotic medication use was higher in severely deprived neighborhoods vs less deprived neighborhoods (19.2% vs 17.1%; adjusted mean difference, 2.0 [95% CI, 0.35 to 3.71] percentage points) in nursing homes that fell below critical levels of staffing (less than 3 hours of nurse staffing per resident-day). These findings suggest that levels of staffing modify disparities seen in inappropriate antipsychotic medication use among nursing homes located in severely deprived neighborhoods compared with nursing homes in less deprived neighborhoods. These findings may have important implications for improving staffing in more severely deprived neighborhoods.

Strain at work in any profession negatively affects the people working and overall performance of employees. This in turn has a negative impact on production or quality of services being offered. This applies to police officers especially those working in major towns in Kenya where crime rate is too high and cost of living is unimaginably high. According to GOK crime report of 2014, Murang’a town being one of the Kenyan major towns has been rated as having highest crime levels culminated by illegal groupings like Mungiki and Gaza boys. Among the major crimes recorded in Murang’a include violent robberies, theft of motor vehicles, house breakings and burglary, kidnapping, bank robberies, homicides and gender violence among others. Reasons behind high crime rate in Murang’a town have not been clearly established so far. Many scholars have tried to establish causes of crime in Murang’a town and among the listed causes include poverty levels, population growth and proximity to Kenyan capital Nairobi among others but none has considered effects of occupational strain among police officers in the course of performance of their duties. Occupational strain among police officers could be having adverse effects on performance by police officers and in turn negatively affect services they render to the public and this may lead to high crime rate and general insecurity. Failure to address causes of occupational strain among police undermines effort to curb insecurity in our major towns in Kenya. Strained officers are poorly motivated and generally demoralized hence poor service delivery. The focus of this paper, therefore, is to build greater understanding of the causes of occupational strain among police officers in Murang’a town, effects of such strain to general security of Murang’a town and possible measures that can be undertaken to address the problem of occupational strain among police officers working in Murang’a town. The paper briefly presents findings of research conducted in Murang’a town over the same topic and recommendations thereto, in order to address the problem of occupational strain among police officers and improve their welfare and wellbeing. All this is aimed at motivating them to provide good services and to make them more effective which in turn will improve security of Murang’a town.

Research SummaryPolice brutality is a widespread phenomenon around the world. Particularly gruesome human rights abuses in the course of policing take place in Latin America, the world's most violent region outside war zones. Democratic institutions such as competitive elections, checks and balances, and judicial independence are insufficient to prevent police from abusing their power. What factors explain that police engage in abusive behaviors, including illegal arrest, the fabrication of evidence, the use of torture to extract confessions, and the excessive use of force causing injury or death? How can societies restrain these abusive behaviors and subject police to the rule of law? Police behavior is shaped by a combination of institutional, societal, political, organizational, and individual factors. Inquisitorial criminal justice institutions, inherited from the colonial past, have persisted in Latin America until very recently. This meant that democracies in the region were born with weak due process protections that have enabled state authorities and police to abuse their coercive powers as they investigate and prosecute crimes. Police brutality is further the product of security policies. High crime rates and the presence of highly organized criminal groups have pushed many Latin American governments to adopt militarized security interventions ‐including deploying the armed forces to control crime and militarizing police forces. Populist demands for harsh policies, moreover, generate incentives for politicians to adopt security strategies that violate human rights and which, in the long run, increase violence in society. The most affected groups are the poor, people of color, and those living in impoverished minoritized communities.Policy ImplicationsIt is essential to strengthen due process protections and judicial oversight over police to reduce torture and other forms of police brutality. Police demilitarization and, under some conditions, community‐oriented policing approaches can sharply reduce the use of excessive force causing injury or death. Body‐worn cameras (BWC), moreover, can effectively be used to reduce police abusive behavior —and violence against police officers — even in high violence situations and where toxic police‐community relations prevail. One limitation of this technology is that it gives too much leeway to frontline officers to turn their cameras on. Poor supervision can further undermine police compliance with camera protocols. These problems can be overcome by assigning cameras to supervisors and using more advanced technologies that allow turning cameras on from the main station. Monetary incentives that reward police officers “to kill less” is another effective policy intervention to reduce police violence causing injury or death.

Automated decision making is becoming the norm across large parts of society, which raises interesting liability challenges when human control over technical systems becomes increasingly limited. This article defines “quasi‐automation” as inclusion of humans as a basic rubber‐stamping mechanism in an otherwise completely automated decision‐making system. Three cases of quasi‐automation are examined, where human agency in decision making is currently debatable: self‐driving cars, border searches based on passenger name records, and content moderation on social media. While there are specific regulatory mechanisms for purely automated decision making, these regulatory mechanisms do not apply if human beings are (rubber‐stamping) automated decisions. More broadly, most regulatory mechanisms follow a pattern of binary liability in attempting to regulate human or machine agency, rather than looking to regulate both. This results in regulatory gray areas where the regulatory mechanisms do not apply, harming human rights by preventing meaningful liability for socio‐technical decision making. The article concludes by proposing criteria to ensure meaningful agency when humans are included in automated decision‐making systems, and relates this to the ongoing debate on enabling human rights in Internet infrastructure.

ABSTRACTThis study reports on experiences using fieldwork protocols (FPs) in guiding the inventory of safety conditions in public places. Relying on theories of environmental criminology, situational crime prevention, and crime prevention through environmental design (CPTED), FPs are used to collect data on-site for three different types of public places: subway stations, shopping centers and parks. The fieldwork data are compared with other data sources and mapped using geographical information system (GIS) technology or building information modeling (BIM). Based on criteria of validity, reliability, and generalizability of evidence collected on-site, the study shows that FPs are better suited for environments that follow some uniform structure (subway stations) than other types of public places (urban parks). The article concludes with lessons for using FPs in guiding data collection for safety inventories and recommendations for future research.

Inspired by theories of environmental criminology, this paper is concerned with the criminogenic potential of football matches. Do matches generate patterns of crime within grounds and beyond them? If so, over what period and over what distance are these effects produced? Police-recorded data for five football stadia for a 6-year timeframe (2005–2010) are examined using non-parametric permutation tests. The spatial extent of any patterns are quantified and used to further examine differences in the temporal distribution of crime and incidents. Change in the spatial distribution of crime and incidents occurred around all five stadia and did so during those periods when the ambient population was elevated on match days. The results provide further support for theories of environmental criminology, suggesting that there is a higher risk of crime and incidents in the areas immediately around stadia during the hours when matches take place.

Aim: Crimes committed on railways and trains are at the center of the study with the question of how different built environmental and geographical factors affect them, what it depends on where, with what frequency and what type of crime they commit. Methodology: The data included in the research were taken from the databases of MÁV-START Zrt. and the National Police Headquarters (crime location: railway), which were examined according to the following factors: types of crime; location, settlement; railway line, railway station; train; period; and the effect of crime prevention tools. The research is based on the theories of environmental criminology, geography of crime and situational crime prevention. Findings: During the 5 years under review the number of crimes committed on trains has increased. Of the factors examined the location of the railway lines has the greatest impact on criminals. Most crimes are committed in Budapest and in the north-western region of Hungary, Győr, especially on railway line 1. Different types of crimes are committed on the western and eastern railway lines. In terms of types of trains, most crimes are committed on Railjet trains and passenger trains. These are mainly committed in February and the summer. Crime prevention tools and techniques used on trains are becoming more and more common. The examined factors not only affect the offenders individually, but also collectively. Value: I have drawn conclusions about the connection with crimes committed on railways and social, socio-economic factors in Hungary. I also emphasize the importance of crime prevention techniques that can help to improve passenger safety and the reduce crime in rail transport.

This study reports on experiences using fieldwork protocols (FPs) in guiding the inventory of safety conditions in public places. Relying on theories of environmental criminology, situational crime prevention, and crime prevention through environmental design (CPTED), FPs are used to collect data on-site for three different types of public places: subway stations, shopping centers and parks. The fieldwork data are compared with other data sources and mapped using geographical information system (GIS) technology or building information modeling (BIM). Based on criteria of validity, reliability, and generalizability of evidence collected on-site, the study shows that FPs are better suited for environments that follow some uniform structure (subway stations) than other types of public places (urban parks). The article concludes with lessons for using FPs in guiding data collection for safety inventories and recommendations for future research.