The Geography of Urban Crime


Book Description

This book introduces the geography of urban crime by integrating the concepts of criminology with the spatial perspective that geography brings to the study of criminal behaviour. The author begins with an examination of the sources of criminological data, and their spatial dimensions, then discusses the use of geographical approaches to study both offences and offenders in their local environment.




The Geography of Crime


Book Description




The Urban Fabric of Crime and Fear


Book Description

How does the city’s urban fabric relate to crime and fear, and how is that fabric affected by crime and fear? Does the urban environment affect one’s decision to commit an offence? Is there a victimisation-related inequality within cities? How do crime and fear interrelate to inequality and segregation in cities of developing countries? What are the challenges to planning cities which are both safe and sustainable? This book searches for answers to these questions in the nature of the city, particularly in the social interactions that take place in urban space distinctively guided by different land uses and people’s activities. In other words, the book deals with the urban fabric of crime and fear. The novelty of the book is to place safety and security issues on the urban scale by (1) showing links between urban structure, and crime and fear, (2) illustrating how different disciplines deal with urban vulnerability to (and fear of) crime (3) including concrete examples of issues and challenges found in European and North American cities, and, without being too extensive, also in cities of the Global South.




The Oxford Handbook of the History of Crime and Criminal Justice


Book Description

The historical study of crime has expanded in criminology during the past few decades, forming an active niche area in social history. Indeed, the history of crime is more relevant than ever as scholars seek to address contemporary issues in criminology and criminal justice. Thus, The Oxford Handbook of the History of Crime and Criminal Justice provides a systematic and comprehensive examination of recent developments across both fields. Chapters examine existing research, explain on-going debates and controversies, and point to new areas of interest, covering topics such as criminal law and courts, police and policing, and the rise of criminology as a field. This Handbook also analyzes some of the most pressing criminological issues of our time, including drug trafficking, terrorism, and the intersections of gender, race, and class in the context of crime and punishment. The definitive volume on the history of crime, The Oxford Handbook of the History of Crime and Criminal Justice is an invaluable resource for students and scholars of criminology, criminal justice, and legal history.




Geographical Information System and Crime Mapping


Book Description

Geographical Information System and Crime Mapping features a diverse array of Geographic Information System (GIS) applications in crime analysis, from general issues such as GIS as a communication process, interjurisdictional mapping and data sharing to specific applications in tracking serial killers and predicting violence-prone zones. It supports readers in developing and implementing crime mapping techniques. The distribution of crime is explained with reference to theories of human ecology, transport network, built environment, housing markets, and forms of urban management, including policing. Concepts are supported with relevant case studies and real-time crime data to illustrate concepts and applications of crime mapping. Aimed at senior undergraduate, graduate students, professionals in GIS, Crime Analysis, Spatial Analysis, Ergonomics and human factors, this book: Provides an update of GIS applications for crime mapping studies Highlights growing potential of GIS for crime mapping, monitoring, and reduction through developing and implementing crime mapping techniques Covers Operational Research, Spatial Regression model, Point Analysis and so forth Builds models helpful in police patrolling, surveillance and crime mapping from a technology perspective Includes a dedicated section on case studies including exercises and data samples




Putting Fear of Crime on the Map


Book Description

Since first emerging as an issue of concern in the late 1960s, fear of crime has become one of the most researched topics in contemporary criminology and receives considerable attention in a range of other disciplines including social ecology, social psychology and geography. Researchers looking the subject have consistently uncovered alarming characteristics, primarily relating to the behavioural responses that people adopt in relation to their fear of crime. This book reports on research conducted over the past eight years, in which efforts have been made to pioneer the combination of techniques from behavioural geography with Geographic Information Systems (GIS) in order to map the fear of crime. The first part of the book outlines the history of research into fear of crime, with an emphasis on the many approaches that have been used to investigate the problem and the need for a spatially-explicit approach. The second part provides a technical break down of the GIS-based techniques used to map fear of crime and summarises key findings from two separate study sites. The authors describe collective avoidance behaviour in relation to disorder decline models such as the Broken Windows Thesis, the potential to integrate fear mapping with police-community partnerships and emerging avenues for further research. Issues discussed include fear of crime in relation to housing prices and disorder, the use of fear mapping as a means with which to monitor the impact of Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) and fear mapping in transit environments.




Uncovering the Crimes of Urbanisation


Book Description

From the social cleansing of cities through to indigenous land struggles at the frontline of extraction megaprojects, planetary urbanisation is a contested process that is radically shaping social life and the sustainability of human civilisation. In this pioneering intervention, it is maintained that this turbulent planetary process is also a potent space for state-corporate criminality. Market manipulation, fraud, corruption, violence and human rights abuses have become critical spokes in the way space is being transformed to benefit speculative interests. This book not only offers investigative data that documents in detail the intricate ways state and corporate actors collude to profit from the built environment; it also establishes the tools for building a research agenda that can interrogate the crimes of urbanisation on a comparative, longitudinal basis. The author sets out an investigative methodology which can be appropriated to conduct probing research into the hidden schemas and forms of collusion that buttress state-corporate criminality in the urban sphere. Coupled to this, a theoretical framework is developed for thinking about the networks, processes and mechanisms at the heart of property market manipulation, and the broader social relationships that sustain and reward illicit speculative activity. This book concludes that researchers and civil society have a critical role to play in challenging a historical form of planetary urbanisation, marked by endemic state-corporate criminality, that poses significant threats to the sustainability of lived communities and the rich biospheres that they depend upon. This book will be of interest to criminologists, sociologists, human geographers, political scientists and those engaged with development studies, as well as civil society organisations and urban researchers.




Geography of Crime in China since the Economic Reform of 1978


Book Description

China has seen dramatic social changes since the Economic Reform of 1978; however, the economic upsurge and rapid urbanization present a two-edged sword, with the consequence of more challenging crime problems. This book presents an analysis of criminal issues in China from a geographic perspective, utilizing both spatio-temporal analysis and qualitative techniques at multiple spatial and temporal scales. It pays particularly close attention to a pilot study in Shenzhen city, testing the applicability of theories developed in Western society to the Chinese context. As such, this book is not merely a piece of research work, but rather a systematic overview of Chinese national crime issues.




Social Theories of Urban Violence in the Global South


Book Description

While cities often act as the engines of economic growth for developing countries, they are also frequently the site of growing violence, poverty, and inequality. Yet, social theory, largely developed and tested in the Global North, is often inadequate in tackling the realities of life in the dangerous parts of cities in the Global South. Drawing on the findings of an ambitious five-year, 15-project research programme, Social Theories of Urban Violence in the Global South offers a uniquely Southern perspective on the violence–poverty–inequalities dynamics in cities of the Global South. Through their research, urban violence experts based in low- and middle-income countries demonstrate how "urban violence" means different things to different people in different places. While some researchers adopt or adapt existing theoretical and conceptual frameworks, others develop and test new theories, each interpreting and operationalizing the concept of urban violence in the particular context in which they work. In particular, the book highlights the links between urban violence, poverty, and inequalities based on income, class, gender, and other social cleavages. Providing important new perspectives from the Global South, this book will be of interest to policymakers, academics, and students with an interest in violence and exclusion in the cities of developing countries.




Crime, Bodies and Space


Book Description

With cities increasingly following rigid rules for designing out crime and producing spaces under surveillance, this book asks how information shapes bodies, space, and, ultimately, policymaking. In recent years, public spaces have changed in Western countries, with the urban realm becoming an ever-more monitored, privatised, homogeneous, and aseptic space that has lost its character, uniqueness, and diversity in the name of ‘security’. This underpins precise moral and political choices in terms of what a space should be, how it can be used, and by whom. These choices generate material consequences concerning urban inequality and freedom, or otherwise, of movement. Based on ethnographic and autoethnographic explorations in London’s ‘criminal’ spaces, this book illustrates how rules, policies, and moral values, far from being abstract concepts, are in fact material. Outlining the basis of a new urban information ethics, the book both exposes and challenges how moral values and predefined categories are applied to, and materially shape, the movement of bodies in urban space with regard to crime and security policies. Drawing on Gilbert Simondon’s information theory and a wide range of work in urban studies, geography, and planning, as well as in surveillance studies, object-oriented ontology, and contemporary theoretical work on both materiality and affect, the book provides a radically new perspective on urban space in general, and crime and security in particular. This book uses a balanced mix of theoretical concepts and empirical study to bring theory and practice together in an intertwining of ethnography and autoethnography. This book will be of interest to students and scholars in the fields of urban studies, urban geography, sociology, surveillance studies, legal theory, socio-legal studies, planning law, environmental law, and land law.