Street Crime Research Articles

On Kernel-Based Intensity Estimation of Spatial Point Patterns on Linear Networks

ABSTRACTWe propose an extension of Diggle’s nonparametric edge-corrected kernel-based intensity estimator to the case of events coming from an inhomogenous point pattern on a linear network. We analyze its statistical properties, showing that it is an unbiased estimator of the first-order intensity; we also provide an expression for the variance, and comment on the appropriate bandwidth selection. Our estimator is compared with the current existing equal-split discontinuous kernel density estimator in terms of the mean integrated squared error (MISE). We then use our estimator on two real datasets. We first revisit street crimes in an area of Chicago, obtaining similar results to previously published ones based on a parametric intensity function. Then, we study network-based spatial events consisting of calls to the Police department reporting anti-social behavior in the city of Castellon (Spain).

Zdroje nebezpečnosti v sociálně vyloučené lokalitě

The present study aims to contribute to the development of sociological research on insecurity in socially excluded localities in the Czech Republic. Inspiration for the conceptualisation of the subject of this study comes from the field of critical security studies and specifically the Copenhagen and Aberystwyth schools of security and feminism. Empirically, the study draws on the author's long-term experience conducting fieldwork in socially excluded localities, mainly in the socially excluded locality Haviřov-Sumbark. The study concludes that insecurity cannot be reduced to just the issue of crime or violence, as existing scholarship has done. An element of insecurity in socially excluded localities is also represented by territorial stigmatisation and structural victimisation, that is, fear of the consequences of symbolic pollution and declining living standards or low social status. Symbolic stigmatisation and structural victimisation have a constraining effect on how inhabitants of excluded localities live their everyday lives, albeit in different ways than street crime does.

Crime prevention through community empowerment: An empirical study of social capital in Kyoto, Japan

Crime prevention activities led by neighborhood associations are common throughout Japan and exemplify the idea in environmental criminology that communities can be kept safe by residents themselves. In this study, we surveyed neighborhood associations in Kyoto to test a theoretical model for social capital and community based crime prevention that we developed as part of our earlier work in Kobe. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) based on survey data and police records for street crimes and residential burglary suggest that specific efforts by community residents can enrich social capital and lead to community safety and security both subjectively and objectively. Social capital had a significant effect on the reduction of street crime, although not for burglary, and our findings suggest that social capital reduces the fear of crime and increases a sense well-being for families and seniors. Although these well-being measures are subjective, emotional change is important in a context where there is no association between actual crime rates and fear of crime. Our research may offer practical insights for the development of universal methodologies that can contribute to the prevention of crime and sense of security through community empowerment.

The impact of street lights on spatial-temporal patterns of crime in Detroit, Michigan

The importance of understanding crime in the United States assumed enhanced protrusion in the wake of the increased crime rates year by year in certain cities. Neighborhood social demographic variables have been largely used to measure their associations with crime. Other than those social factors, street lighting is a feature of urban and suburban settlement which is widely thought to be a necessary element in preventing crime. Previous research has drawn mixed conclusions about the relationship between street lighting and crime, and the effect of streetlights on neighborhood crime is not entirely definitive. To address this challenge, we examined the spatial associations between street light density, neighborhood social disorganization characteristics and crime (e.g., burglary, vehicle theft, weapons offenses, etc.) in Detroit, Michigan in 2014. Using the street lighting data from the Detroit Public Lighting Authority, crime data from the City of Detroit, supplemented with Census 2010 data, we conducted a Generalized Least Squares model of neighborhood crime in 879 census block groups to test the random effects of the spatial variables and different hours of day on crime. The results show an inverse relationship between street light density and crime rates across census block groups in Detroit and the effects of time period of a day vary according to different types of crime. These findings provided more credible evidence for researchers and policy makers to effectively optimize scarce public safety resources, such as improving street lighting in disadvantaged neighborhoods.

Latino Nativity Variations Link to Street Violence in Drug Markets

The Latino paradox is defined as “Latinos do[ing] much better on various social indicators, including violence, than blacks and apparently even whites, given relatively high levels of disadvantage.” We do not know, however, if the Latino paradox is masquerading what is known as criminal social capital. This study defined geographic drug markets with drug sales crime data in Philadelphia. Multilevel negative binomial models showed census block group street violence levels varied significantly across drug markets. Although each additional 100 native-born Latinos was associated with expected street violent crime counts 8% lower, each additional 100 foreign-born Latinos was associated with expected street violent crime counts 28% lower, controlling for nearby street violence and structural predictors.

Cashlessness and Street Crime: A Cross-national Study of Direct Deposit Payment and Robbery Rates

Substantial variation in national crime rates suggests social structure and cultural context influence offending and victimization. Several prominent criminological theories anticipate a positive association between the prevalence of cash in a society and its rates of pecuniary crime. We examined the association between one form of “cashlessness” and national robbery rates across nations (n = 67), controlling for several structural covariates of national crime rates. We obtained data on robbery from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, and data on government-based cashlessness from the Global Financial Inclusion Database. We found nations with higher levels of government-based cashlessness had lower robbery rates (β = −.41, p = .02). We also undertook several sensitivity analyses, including tests for a relationship with commercial cashlessness and for crimes like homicide and burglary. Our results suggest technological advancements that reduce cash in a society may have implications for a nation’s robbery rates.

Bringing Crime Trends Back into Criminology: A Critical Assessment of the Literature and a Blueprint for Future Inquiry

Rates of street crime have dropped substantially over the past several decades, but important nuances of this decline are underappreciated and the reasons for it remain unclear. We suggest that the narrow conception of change adopted within criminology has hindered the field's capacity to develop a stronger scientific understanding of crime trends. Criminology has focused heavily on within-person changes in crime, devoting comparatively little attention to changes in aggregate crime rates. In this review, we make a case for integrating research on crime trends into the core of criminology. After describing the late twentieth century crime drop, we present a conceptual framework that situates the study of crime trends in the criminological theoretical literature and illuminates several unresolved questions central to criminological inquiry. We then highlight major shortcomings of current empirical approaches and outline several methodological improvements that would enhance our capacity to describe and explain crime trends.

A smart city is a safe city: the current status of street crime and its victim prevention using a digital application

Modern street crime has been increasingly affecting the formation of the criminogenic situation in Russia. The main goal of this paper is exploring the possible application of modern digital technologies in the evaluation and prevention of public crime. The methods presented in this empirical research are: monitoring, statistical methods, modeling and questioning, content analysis, research result processing. As a result of the analysis of the received data, generalized quantitative and qualitative indicators of modern street crime were presented: prevalence of mercenary and violent crimes (61,4%) in the current criminal situation in the city streets (structure of street crime); the percentage of street crime in relation to all crime done in public places is 45,0% with the rising tendency of serious crime and latency; places where street crime takes place are empty, open city spaces composing about 12% of all the streets of the city; the prevailing “work schedule” of a street criminal is determined by the time of the year (fallwinter); day of the week (Friday, weekends and holidays) and time of day (evening-night); the increase in mobile phone theft from people passing in the streets; a characteristic way of street theft and robbery is their suddenness and unpredictability. The article supports the conclusion that the current system of street crime prevention methods and its practice doesn`t provide salvation from street criminals and thus requires further improvement with the consideration of the rising possibilities of the internet-space, specifically, usage of digital applications and devices.

The development of the manufactured gas industry in Europe

Abstract The manufactured gas industry was one of the great technological innovations of the industrial revolution. Whilst it was developed in Great Britain, this was not in isolation, and required the input of many European engineers, scientists and entrepreneurs for its success. Although the innovation of making inflammable gas for lighting may now seem quite simple, it brought considerable change to society. Initially, gas was used for lighting, replacing candles and oil lamps, greatly improving safety within factories by reducing the occurrence of fires. The concerns over street crime and the potential benefits of brighter gas street lights were key factors in its wider uptake. Lighting was its primary use for the first 70 years. As competition emerged from electricity, the gas industry found new markets in heat and power. Gas manufacturing also produced a range of by-products which were later found to have some very useful properties and became important feedstocks to the chemical industry. Manufactured gas was the first integrated utility energy network and its success in Britain led to a rapid spread across Europe. Since its demise and replacement by natural gas, it has left a shared but unique legacy in each country.

Influence of racial stereotypes on investigative decision-making in criminal investigations: A qualitative comparative analysis

Recent research suggests that the police are aware of the general trends in street crime and, from such awareness, tend to form impressions of the likelihood that persons belonging to various racia...

Criminal Behavior among the Elderly: A Look into What People Think about This Emerging Topic

The elderly population is growing fast. With this changing demographic fact we can expect to see overall crime rates among the elderly growing right along with it. This study explored people’s knowledge about elderly crime and their perceptions about elderly offenders. Survey data were collected from 229 respondents living in Southern California. Statistical analyses on the key variables revealed a number of significant group differences in regard to age F(7, 221) = 2.15, p = 0.039, and ethnicity F(5, 223) = 2.60, p = 0.026. The data revealed that most of the respondents believe that elderly crime is going to get worse over time (58.5%) and that white-collar crimes were the biggest problem (44.5%). Male respondents (M = 1.80, SD = 3.83) on average knew more elderly offenders than female respondents (M = 0.99, SD = 2.39). Respondents from all ages tended to believe that older people were less likely to commit street crimes but were about as likely to commit white-collar crimes as younger people. There also appears to be a pattern of increasing drug use and drug abuse among both elderly men and women. Increasing problems with criminal offending among the elderly are going to have major implications across different social systems and institutions, such as political, economic, and legal systems, corrections, rehabilitation, and medical and mental health services.

Challenges Facing the Controlling Stage of the Disaster Response Management Resulting from War Operations and Terrorism in Iraq

The effects of war in Iraq are coupled with the susceptibility to natural hazards, which has exposed the people of Iraq to multiple man-made disasters. Despite the fact that terrorists did not have a hold on any part of Iraq before the US invasion, it is generally believed that Iraq contains many terrorists and terrorist organisations. As a result, violence in Iraq has become normalised, ranging from the Iraqi and US military assaults and sectarian militias, threat of suicide bombings, to violent street crime. Because response activities must operate in a constantly changing environment during a disaster, the response operation is complex and need more controlling efforts. Therefore, it is widely agreed that controlling the response to disaster stemming from war operations and terrorism is often considered a difficult stage within the four disaster response management stages: planning, organising, directing, and controlling. This paper is based on an ongoing PhD study. It aims to determine the challenges facing the controlling stage of disaster response management in Iraq with particular reference to war operations and terrorism. This paper adopts a single holistic case study approach, where disaster response management is the unit of analysis. In order to develop a rich and robust data set, a mixed methods approach is utilised based on semi-structured interviews, questionnaire surveys and document analysis. A conceptual content analysis is used to articulate the primary data and this is then analysed in the context of the secondary data. The findings show that disaster response controlling stage faced different challenges such as lack of modern technology and equipment, multiple sources for the decision at the scene, lack of public education, and failure in imposing a proper security cordon.

Criminologists and Historians of Crime: A Partnership Well Worth Pursuing

From 2013 to 2016, I had the privilege of serving as a member of the National Academy of Science’s Roundtable on Crime Trends. The Roundtable, sponsored by the National Institute of Justice, brought together scholars from criminology, public health, economics, and sociology, as well as jurists, public health officials, and former police chiefs, in an effort to better understand recent trends in street crime in the United States, particularly the so-called “crime drop” of the 1990s. Ably chair...

Profane Concerns in Sacred Spaces: The Challenges and Consequences of Implementing Security Measures in Religious Congregations

ABSTRACTReligious congregations represent a target for both street and bias-motivated crimes. Addressing these risks presents a challenge, as security measures could undermine the intended social reality of the congregation. Utilizing 52 interviews with places of worship representing a variety of religious traditions, we examine how congregations balance crime concerns with their organizational mission and identity. Our interviews show that congregations are aware that their goal of being an open and welcoming member of the community also brings with it vulnerabilities. Taking security steps, though, comes with consequences for the congregation's relationship to attendees and its identity and mission

A comparison between the cost effectiveness of CCTV and improved street lighting as a means of crime reduction

The effectiveness of CCTV and improved street lighting has been studied extensively in terms of their potential for reducing the number of crimes in a certain area. However, this does not take into account the cost of the interventions or the savings due to crime reduction. This paper presents a model, which takes the form of a cellular automaton to simulate the implementation of improved street lighting and CCTV cameras using a range of strategies. This permits an exploration of simulated options to find which is most cost effective and what the best strategy for implementation is. The results indicate that there are few situations where CCTV is more cost effective than improved street lighting as a way of reducing street crime. In addition, it is shown that the strategy of targeting locations with the highest crime rates, “hot spots”, has the greatest potential for maximising the cost effectiveness of interventions.

STREET NETWORK STRUCTURE AND CRIME RISK: AN AGENT‐BASED INVESTIGATION OF THE ENCOUNTER AND ENCLOSURE HYPOTHESES

AbstractStreet networks shape day‐to‐day activities in complex ways, dictating where, when, and in what contexts potential victims, offenders, and crime preventers interact with one another. Identifying generalizable principles of such influence offers considerable utility to theorists, policy makers, and practitioners. Unfortunately, key difficulties associated with the observation of these interactions, and control of the settings within which they take place, limit traditional empirical approaches that aim to uncover mechanisms linking street network structure with crime risk. By drawing on parallel advances in the formal analyses of street networks and the computational modeling of crime events interactions, we present a theoretically informed and empirically validated agent‐based model of residential burglary that permits investigation of the relationship between street network structure and crime commission and prevention through guardianship. Through the use of this model, we explore the validity of competing theoretical accounts of street network permeability and crime risk—the encounter (eyes on the street) and enclosure (defensible space) hypotheses. The results of our analyses provide support for both hypotheses, but in doing so, they reveal that the relationship between street network permeability and crime is likely nonlinear. We discuss the ramifications of these findings for both criminological theory and crime prevention practice.

Street crime prediction model based on the physical characteristics of a streetscape: Analysis of streets in low-rise housing areas in South Korea

Previous crime prediction research focusing on regional characteristics is lacking in terms of the examination of physical characteristics of individual crime scenes. This study, therefore, presents a street crime prediction model by analysing streetscape features within an actual field of vision for a low-rise housing area in South Korea, which serves as a gauge for potential offenders to carry out crime. First, we performed logistic regression to analyse the correlation between street crime opportunities and the elements of streets to derive an equation for predicting street crime using selected variables. Next, we created a crime prediction map based on a geographic information system that contains attribute data on these physical characteristics and presented a street crime prediction model based on the derived prediction equation. Finally, to test the prediction model, we compared actual crime data from the selected area with the results obtained from the prediction model. The test results showed that the prediction model classified 11 out of 29 actual crime spots as crime occurrence; among the 312 non-crime spots, 257 were classified as non-crime occurrence. Based on these test results, we confirm that the occurrence of street crime is affected by the physical characteristics within the actual field of vision and discuss the improvement of the prediction model.

Police Misconduct: Mapping its Location, Seriousness and Theoretical Underpinning

Abstract Police misconduct and the location of street crimes and deviance have received much research attention. The location of police misconduct, by contrast, has not. Taking the case of Ireland, where policing underwent significant reform in 2007, police oversight data are mapped to determine the location and nature of complaints and any clustering of police misconduct, particularly in areas of greatest deprivation usually associated with people coming into most frequent contact with police. The implications of the findings for police, police oversight, and existing theories by which geography of deviance is framed are discussed.

It's a War Out There: Contextualized Narratives of Violent Acts

PurposeTo examine how individuals operating in violent environments draw on cultural and personal narratives of place and self to make sense of routine preparations for violence. MethodsData are based on in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 17 individuals involved in street crime and assaultive violence in St. Louis, Missouri. Participants had engaged in violence within the month prior to being interviewed. We used chain referral methods to identify and recruit them. ResultsParticipants portrayed their neighborhoods as warzones and themselves as people who succeed in these environments due to preparedness for violence and personal capacity for violence typified by street soldiers. They used this situated identity to explain preparations for violence including: readiness to see threats and respond quickly, selecting allies for fights, and arming themselves. ConclusionsThe implications of our findings for the study of narrative criminology are discussed including how place and identity narratives facilitate an understanding of self in action that is both after-the-fact sense-making and crime conducive.

Network Constrained Spatio-Temporal Hotspot Mapping of Crimes in Faisalabad

The Network Kernel Density Estimation (NetKDE) is a useful tool for visualization of point events over a network space, but it lacks in expressing the statistical significance of the mapped phenomenon. In this paper, we discuss the network hotspot detection of street crimes by integrating the NetKDE and the Getis-Ord GI* statistics. We selected four types of network-constrained crimes, i.e., bike theft, car theft, robbery, and snatching. The NetKDE is a useful technique to study the patterns of crimes bounded by the road networks. We used the Spatial Analysis along Networks (SANET) tools for computing the Network Kernel Density Estimation (NetKDE) and utilized the results of the NetKDE as input values for computing the Getis-Ord GI* statistics. The combination of these two methods can detect the network-constrained hotspots that are statistically significant. We also performed the network K-function, the extension of the Ripley’s K-function on networks. The network K-function analysis displays the significant clustering of crime events at different scales. Results demonstrated that the intensity of street crimes are strongly concentrated in the central part of the city. Moreover, the results reflected that the functional nature of different urban land use affects the frequency of crime events. Various urban land uses such as commercial, residential and industrial area seemed to influence the distribution of different types of crimes. The hotspot analysis has real potential, impacting the police patrolling protocols. The methods presented in this study suggest that there is a need to distinguish the planar and network hotspots and crime prevention policies could be enacted according to the type of hotspots.