Lecture 5.

Crime, Space and Place

Chicago School and urban ecology
 The geographical distribution of criminal offences is
(generally) not random.

Two traditional concerns of

environmental criminology:

- spatial distribution of offences.

- spatial distribution of offenders.

 Wikström (1991): marked differences in the spatial
patterning of different offences.
 3.3% of specific locations in the city generated 50%
of crime related calls (Sherman et al., 1989):
Minnesota
 even high crime ‘areas’ have relatively safe specific
locations (as well as ‘hotspots’).
 Not necessarily random chances of victimisation
 Much crime is committed near an offender’s home.

 Wiles and Costello (2001): Sheffield, offenders travelled on

average 1.93 miles

  Important relationship between the location of the offence

to the offenders habitual use of space.

 Brantingham and Brantingham (1981): offences are most

likely to occur where criminal opportunities intersect with
cognitively known areas
Routine activities

 Offences are most likely to occur where criminal

opportunities intersect with cognitively known
areas (those areas offenders have intimate
knowledge of)
 Most criminals spend much of their time in non-
criminal activities – however what shapes these
activities also shapes criminal activities
 Individuals move through a series of activities and
as they do so they constantly make decisions
 “People who commit crimes have normal
spatio-temporal movement patterns like
everyone else. The likely location for a crime
is near this normal activity and awareness
space” (Brantingham and Brantingham,
2008:84)
Bottoms, Mawby and Xanthos (1989): council estates in Sheffield.

“It’s just unbearable here: I can’t even let the children out of the door.
The people are awful, the houses are a disgrace, and the whole area is like a slum.
The state of the area and the type of people coming to live here.
[…] It’s like the end of the world here”

The paradox of Gardenia was that it

could generate both loathing and feelings
of affinity: unless both are understood,
the estate is not understood […]

...in order to understand the criminality

of residential areas it is vital to consider
“Gardenia” “Stonewall”
who lives in those areas … what kind of
social life the residents have created
(1989: 63; 68)
‘At every design scale, from building
to business improvement district, there
is emphasis on the control and
regulation of human behaviour’
(Christopherson, 1994: 412).
‘Bum-proof’
bus bench
“any post-Burgess mapping of urban
space must acknowledge the power
that bad dreams now wield over the
public landscape” (Davis, 1998:
387).
 Remapping of Burgess’ concentric
zones

 addition of decisive new factor:

‘fear’
Davis (1998)
Los Angeles: The Ecology of Fear
Review questions:
1. Is urban crime merely opportunist and random or
patterned as environmental criminologists tend to
suggest?
2. The Brantinghams (1981) argued that offences are
most likely to occur where criminal opportunities
intersect with cognitively known areas. What did
they mean?
3. Cities are designed in such a way to segregate
populations and ensure social order. Do you
agree?