THE LAW OF CRIME CONCENTRATION AND THE CRIMINOLOGY OF PLACE∗
DAVID WEISBURD
Department of Criminology, Law and Society, George Mason University, Institute of Criminology, The Hebrew University
CRIMINOLOGY Volume 53 Number 2 133–157 2015
Abstract
According to Laub (2004), criminology has a developmental life course with specific turning points that allow for innovations in how we understand and respond to crime. I argue that criminology should take another turn in direction, focusing on microgeographic hot spots. By examining articles published in Criminology, I show that only marginal attention has been paid to this area of study to date—often termed the criminology of place. I illustrate the potential utility of a turning point by examining the law of crime concentration at place, which states that for a defined measure of crime at a specific microgeographic unit, the concentration of crime will fall within a narrow bandwidth of percentages for a defined cumulative proportion of crime. By providing the first cross-city comparison of crime concentration using a common geographic unit, the same crime type, and examining a general crime measure, I find strong support for a law of crime concentration. I also show that crime concentration stays within a narrow bandwidth across time, despite strong volatility in crime incidents. By drawing from these findings, I identify several key research questions for future study. In conclusion, I argue that a focus on the criminology of place provides significant opportunity for young scholars and has great promise for advancing criminology as a science.
KEYWORDS: crime concentration, unit of analysis, hot spots, microgeographic, crime places
______________________
∗This article is based on my Sutherland Lecture at the American Society of Criminology meetings in San Francisco in 2014. I want to thank Breanne Cave, Matthew Nelson, Shai Amram, and Alese Wooditch for their assistance in preparing this address. I am especially indebted to Alese Wooditch who helped me prepare the data and develop the analyses for examination of crime concentration across cities. I also want to thank Barak Ariel, Anthony Braga, Frank Cullen, Charlotte Gill, Liz Groff, Joshua Hinkle, John Laub, Stephen Mastrofski, and Daniel Nagin for their thoughtful comments on the article. Direct correspondence to David Weisburd, George Mason University, 4400 University Drive, MS D12, Fairfax, VA 22030 (e-mail: dweisbur@gmu.edu)
REFERENCES
Allport, Floyd H. 1934. The J-curve hypothesis of conforming behavior. Journal of Social Psychology 5:141–83.
Andresen, Martin A., and Nicolas Malleson. 2011. Testing the stability of crime patterns: Implications for theory and policy. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 48:58–82.
Appleyard, Donald. 1981. Livable Streets. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Bak, Per. 1994. Self-organized critically: A holistic view of nature. In Complexity: Metaphors, Models, and Reality, eds. George Cowan, David Pines, and David E. Meltzer. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
Bayley, David. 1994. Police for the Future. New York: Oxford University Press. Bland, J. Martin, and Douglas G. Altman. 1994. Regression towards the mean.
BMJ: British Medical Journal 308:1499.
Blumstein, Alfred, and Jacqueline Cohen. 1973. A theory of the stability of punishment. The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 64:198–207.
Blumstein, Alfred, Jacqueline Cohen, and Daniel S. Nagin. 1976. The dynamics of a homeostatic punishment process. The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 67:317–34.
Blumstein, Alfred, and Soumyo Moitra. 1979. An analysis of the time series of the imprisonment rate in the states of the United States: A further test of the stability of punishment hypothesis. The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 70:376–90.
Blumstein, Alfred, and Joel Wallman. 2000. The recent rise and fall of American violence. In The Crime Drop in America, eds. Alfred Blumstein and Joel Wallman. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.
Braga, Anthony, David M. Hureau, and Andrew V. Papachristos. 2010. The concentration and stability of gun violence at micro places in Boston, 1980–2008. Journal of Quantitative Criminology 26:33–53.
Braga, Anthony, David M. Hureau, and Andrew V. Papachristos. 2011. The relevance of micro places to citywide robbery trends: A longitudinal analysis of robbery incidents at street corners and block faces in Boston. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 48:7–32.
Braga, Anthony A., Andrew V. Papachristos, and David M. Hureau. 2014. The effects of hot spots policing on crime: An updated systematic review and meta-analysis. Justice Quarterly 31:633–63.
Braga, Anthony, and David Weisburd. 2010. Policing Problem Places: Crime Hot Spots and Effective Prevention. Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press.
Brantingham, Patricia L., and Paul J. Brantingham. 1993. Environment, routine, and sit-uation: Toward a pattern theory of crime. In Routine Activity and Rational Choice. Crime Prevention Studies, eds. Ronald V. Clarke and Marcus Felson. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.
Brantingham, Patricia L., and Paul J. Brantingham. 1999. Theoretical model of crime hot spot generation. Studies Crime and Crime Prevention 8:7–26.
Choshen, Maya, and Michal Korach. 2010. Jerusalem: Facts and Trends 2009/2010. Jerusalem: Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies.
Clarke, Ronald V. 1980. Situational crime prevention: Theory and practice. British Journal Criminology 20:136–47.
Clarke, Ronald V. 1995. Situational crime prevention. In Building a Safer Society: Strategic Approaches to Crime Prevention. Crime and Justice: A Review of Research, eds. Michael Tonry and David P. Farrington. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Clarke, Ronald V., and David Weisburd. 1994. Diffusion of crime control benefits: Ob-servations on the reverse of displacement. Crime Prevention Studies 2:165–84.
Cohen, Lawrence E., and Marcus Felson. 1979. Social change and crime rate trends: A routine activity approach. American Sociological Review 44:588–608.
Crow, Wayman, and James Bull. 1975. Robbery Deterrence: An Applied Behavioral Science Demonstration: Final Report. La Jolla, CA: Western Behavioral Science Institute.
Cullen, Francis T. 2010. Cloward, Richard A.: The theory of illegitimate means. In Encyclopedia of Criminological Theory, eds. Francis T. Cullen and Pamela Wilcox. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Cullen, Francis T. 2011. Beyond adolescence-limited criminology: Choosing our future— The American Society of Criminology 2010 Sutherland Address. Criminology 49:287.
Curman, Andrea S., Martin A. Andresen, and Paul J. Brantingham. 2014. Crime and place: A longitudinal examination of street segment patterns in Vancouver, BC. Journal of Quantitative Criminology. E-pub ahead of print.
Dalton, Hugh. 1920. The measurement of the inequality of incomes. Economic Journal 30:348–61.
Dario, Lisa M., Weston J. Morrow, Alese Wooditch, and Samuel G. Vickovic. 2015. Transitory opportunity structures: An examination of surf and crime. Criminal Justice Studies, doi:10.1080/1478601X.2015.1032409.
Durkheim, Emile. 1964 [1895]. ´ The Rules of Sociological Method (George E. G. Catlin, ed. and Sarah A. Solovay and John H. Mueller, trans.). New York: Free Press.
Eck, John E., Ronald V. Clarke, and Rob T. Guerette. 2007. Risky facilities: Crime concentration in homogeneous sets of establishments and facilities. Crime Prevention Studies 21:225.
Eck, John E., and Emily B. Eck. 2012. Crime place and pollution: Expanding crime reduction options through a regulatory approach. Criminology & Public Policy 11:281–316.
Eck, John E., Jeffrey Gersh, and Charlene Taylor. 2000. Finding crime hot spots through repeat address mapping. In Analyzing Crime Patterns: Frontiers of Practice, eds. Victor Goldsmith, Philip McGuire, John Mollenkopf, and Timothy Ross. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Eck, John E., and David Weisburd. 1995. Crime places in crime theory. In Crime Prevention Studies, eds. John E. Eck and David Weisburd. Monsey, NY: Criminal Justice Press.
Elliott, Delbert S., and David Huizinga. 1983. Social class and delinquent behavior in a national youth panel: 1976–1980. Criminology 21:149–77.
Evans, David J., and David T. Herbert. 1989. The Geography of Crime. London, U.K.: Routledge.
Felson, Marcus. 1987. Routine activities and crime prevention in the developing metropolis. Criminology 25:911.
Gini, Corrado. 1912. Variabilita e mutabilit ` a, Studi economico-giuridici della R. ` Universita di Cagliari 3:3–159.
Gottfredson, Michael R., and Travis Hirschi. 1990. A General Theory of Crime. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Groff, Groff, Elizabeth, David Weisburd, and Sue-Ming Yang. 2010. Is it important to examine crime trends at a local “micro” level: A longitudinal analysis of street to street variability in crime trajectories. Journal of Quantitative Criminology 26:7–32.
Guerette, Rob T., and Kate J. Bowers. 2009. Assessing the extent of crime displacement and diffusion of benefits: A review of situational crime prevention evaluations. Criminology 47:1331–68.
Hibdon, Julie. 2013. Crime Hot Spots in Suburbia: A Case Study. Paper presented at the American Society of Criminology.
Hill, Laura G., Katherine Maucione, and Brianne K. Hood. 2007. A focused approach to assessing program fidelity. Prevention Science 8:25–34.
Hirschman, Albert O. 1945. National Power and the Structure of Foreign Trade. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Hunter, Albert, and Terry L. Baumer. 1982. Street traffic, social integration, and fear of crime. Sociological Inquiry 52:122–31.
Jacobs, Jane. 1961. The Death and Life of Great American Cities. New York: Vintage Books.
Juran, Joseph M. 1951. Quality Control Handbook. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Klinger, David A., and George S. Bridges. 1997. Measurement error in calls-for-service as an indicator of crime. Criminology 35:705–26.
Laub, John H. 2004. Life course of criminology in the United States: The American Society of Criminology 2003 Presidential Address. Criminology 42:1.
Laub, John H., and Robert Sampson. 2003. Shared Beginnings, Divergent Lives: Delinquent Boys to Age 70. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Lee, YongJei, John E. Eck, Robin Engel, Murat Ozer, and Rustu Deryol. 2014. Disaggregating hot street segments with alternative measures of concentration. Paper presented at the 70th Conference of the American Society of Criminology (ASC), San Francisco, CA.
Lipovetsky, Stan. 2009. Pareto 80/20 law: Derivation via random partitioning. International Journal of Mathematical Education in Science and Technology 40:271–77.
Loeber, Rolf, David P. Farrington, Magda Stouthamer-Loeber, Terrie E. Moffitt, and Avshalom Caspi. 1998. The development of male offending: Key findings from the first decade of the Pittsburgh Youth Study. Studies on Crime & Crime Prevention 7:141–71.
Lorenz, M. O. 1905. Methods of measuring the concentration of wealth. Publications of the American Statistical Association 9:209–19.
Lum, Cynthia, Chris S. Koper, and Cody W. Telep. 2011. The evidence-based policing matrix. Journal of Experimental Criminology 7:3–26.
Minnesota Department of Public Safety. 2012. Uniform Crime Report. Saint Paul, MN: Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. https://dps.mn.gov/divisions/bca/bcadivisions/mnjis/Documents/2012%20Crime%20Book.pdf.
Moffitt, Terrie E. 1993. Adolescence-limited and life-course-persistent antisocial behavior: A developmental taxonomy. Psychological Review 100:674–701.
Mulvey, Edward P. 2011. Highlights from Pathways to Desistance: A Longitudinal Study of Serious Adolescent Offenders. Washington, DC: Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, U.S. Department of Justice.
Nagin, Daniel S., and Greg Pogarsky. 2001. Integrating celerity, impulsivity, and extralegal sanction threats into a model of general deterrence: Theory and evidence. Criminology 39:865–92.
Pareto, Vilfredo. 1909. Manuel D’Economie Politique. ´ Vol. 7 of Oeuvres completes ` . Geneva, Switzerland: Droz.
Physical law (def. 1). 2010. In Oxford English Dictionary, 3rd ed. Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press.
Pierce, Glenn L., Susan Spaar, and LeBaron R. Briggs. 1988. The Character of Police Work: Strategic and Tactical Implications. Boston, MA: Center for Applied Social Research, Northeastern University.
Ratcliffe, Jerry H. 2004. Geocoding crime and a first estimate of a minimum acceptable hit rate. International Journal of Geographical Information Science 18:61–72.
Reiss, Albert J., Jr., and Jeffrey A. Roth. 1993. Understanding and Preventing Violence. Panel on the Understanding and Control of Violent Behavior, Committee on Law and Justice, Commission on Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education, National Research Council. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.
Roncek, Dennis. 2000. Schools and crime. In Analyzing Crime Patterns Frontiers of Practice, eds. Victor Goldsmith, Philip McGuire, John Mollenkopf, and Timothy Ross. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Sampson, Robert J. 2012. Great American City: Chicago and the Enduring Neighborhood Effect. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Sampson, Robert J., and W. Bryon Groves. 1989. Community structure and crime: Testing social disorganization theory. American Journal of Sociology 94:774–802.
Shaw, Clifford R., and Henry D. McKay. 1942. Juvenile Delinquency and Urban Areas. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Sherman, Lawrence W. 1987. Repeat Calls to Police In Minneapolis. Crime Control Reports 4. Washington, DC: Crime Control Institute.
Sherman, Lawrence W. 1995. Hot spots of crime and criminal careers of places. Crime and Place 4: 35–52.
Sherman, Lawrence W. 2007. The power few: Experimental criminology and the reduction of harm. Journal of Experimental Criminology 3:299–321.
Sherman, Lawrence W., Patrick R. Gartin, and Michael E. Buerger. 1989. Hot spots of predatory crime: Routine activities and the criminology of place. Criminology 27:27.
Sherman, Lawrence W., and David Weisburd. 1995. General deterrent effects of police patrol in crime “hot spots”: A randomized, controlled trial. Justice Quarterly 12:625– 48.
Smith, William R., Sharon Glave Frazee, and Elizabeth L. Davison. 2000. Furthering the integration of routine activity and social disorganization theories: Small units of analysis and the study of street robbery as a diffusion process. Criminology 38:489–523.
Spelman, William. 1995. Criminal careers of public places. In Crime and Place, eds. John E. Eck and David Weisburd. Monsey, NY: Criminal Justice Press.
Steffensmeier, Darrell J., Emilie Andersen Allan, Miles D. Harer, and Cathy Streifel. 1989. Age and the distribution of crime. American Journal of Sociology 94:803–31.
Sutherland, Edwin H. 1947. Principles of Criminology. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Taylor, Ralph B. 1997. Social order and disorder of street blocks and neighborhoods: Ecology, microecology, and the systemic model of social disorganization. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 34:113–55.
Taylor, Ralph B., Stephen D. Gottfredson, and Sidney Bower. 1984. Block crime and fear: Defensible space, local social ties, and territorial functioning. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 21:303–31.
Tel Aviv Government. 2013. http://www.tel-aviv.gov.il/TheCity/Documents/ןותנש% 202013/TheBook/Docs/הנבמ%20יפרגומד/תוחול%20קרפה%201.pdf
Telep, Cody W., Renee J. Mitchell, and David Weisburd. 2014. How much time should the police spend at crime hot spots? Answers from a police agency directed randomized field trial in Sacramento, California. Justice Quarterly 31:905–33.
Townsley, Michael, Ross Homel, and Janet Chaseling. 2003. Infectious burglaries: A test of the near repeat hypothesis. British Journal of Criminology 43:615–33.
Tremblay, Pierre. 1986. The stability of punishment: A follow-up of Blumstein’s hypothesis. Journal of Quantitative Criminology 2:157–80.
Ttofi, Maria M., David P. Farrington, Friedrich Losel, and Rolf Loeber. 2011. The pre- ¨ dictive efficiency of school bullying versus later offending: A systematic/meta-analytic review of longitudinal studies. Criminal Behaviour and Mental Health 21:80–9.
U.S. Census Bureau. 2009–2013. State and County QuickFacts. http://quickfacts. census.gov/qfd/.
U.S. Department of Justice. 2012. Crime in the United States. Washington, DC: Federal Bureau of Investigation. http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-theu.s/2012/crime-in-the-u.s.-2012.
Warr, Mark. 1998. Life-course transitions and desistance from crime. Criminology 36:183– 216.
Weisburd, David, and Shai Amram. 2014. The law of concentrations of crime at place: The case of Tel Aviv-Jaffa. Police Practice & Research 15:101–14.
Weisburd, David, Shawn Bushway, Cynthia Lum, and Sue Ming Yang. 2004. Trajectories of crime at place: A longitudinal study of street segments in the city of Seattle. Criminology 42:283–322.
Weisburd, David, Charlotte Gill, and Alese Wooditch. 2014. Smart Police Initiative Action Plan: Brooklyn Park. Grant 2013-DB-BX-0030.
Washington, DC: Bureau of Justice Assistance. Weisburd, David, and Lorraine Green. 1994. Defining the street-level drug market. In Drugs and Crime: Evaluating Public Policy Initiatives, eds. Doris Layton MacKenzie and Craig D. Uchida. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Weisburd, David, and Lorraine Green. 1995. Policing drug hot spots: The Jersey City drug market analysis experiment. Justice Quarterly 4:711–35.
Weisburd, David, Elizabeth R. Groff, and Sue-Ming Yang. 2012. The Criminology of Place: Street Segments and Our Understanding of the Crime Problem. Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press.
Weisburd, David, Elizabeth R. Groff, and Sue-Ming Yang. 2014. Understanding and controlling hot spots of crime: The importance of formal and informal social controls. Prevention Science 15:31–43.
Weisburd, David, Brian Lawton, and Justin Ready. 2012. Staking out the next generation of studies of the criminology of place: Collecting prospective longitudinal data at crime hot spots. In The Future of Criminology, eds. Rolf Lober and Brandon Welsh. New York: Oxford University Press.
Weisburd David, Brian Lawton, Justin Ready, and Amelia Haviland. 2012. Community Health and Anti-Social Behavior at Drug Hot Spots. Bethesda, MD: National Institute on Drug Abuse.
Weisburd, David, Lisa Maher, and Lawrence W. Sherman. 1992. Contrasting crime general and crime specific theory: The case of hot spots of crime. In Advances in Criminological Theory, eds. Freda Adler and William S. Laufer. New Brunswick, NJ: Trans-action.
Weisburd, David, and Lorraine Mazerolle. 2000. Crime and disorder in drug hot spots: Implications for theory and practice in policing. Police Quarterly 3:331–49.
Weisburd, David, Nancy A. Morris, and Elizabeth R. Groff. 2009. Hot spots of juvenile crime: A longitudinal study of street segments in Seattle, Washington. Journal of Quantitative Criminology 25:443–67.
Weisburd, David, and Cody W. Telep. 2010. The Efficiency of Place-Based Policing. Stockholm, Sweden: The Expert Group for Public Economics. http://eso.expertgrupp.se/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/2010 3-Weisburd-o-Telep.pdf.
Weisburd, David, and Cody W. Telep. 2014a. Law of crime concentrations at places. In Encyclopedia of Criminology and Criminal Justice, eds. David Weisburd and Gerben Buinsma. New York: Springer Verlag.
Weisburd, David, and Cody W. Telep. 2014b. Hot spots policing: What we know and what we need to know. Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice 30:200–20.
Weisburd, David, Cody W. Telep, and Brian Lawton. 2014. Could innovations in policing have contributed to the New York City crime drop even in a period of declining police strength? The case of stop, question and frisk as a hot spots policing strategy. Justice Quarterly 31:129–53.
Weisburd, David, Laura A. Wyckoff, Justin Ready, John E. Eck, Joshua C. Hinkle, and Frank Gajewski. 2006. Does crime just move around the corner? A controlled study of spatial displacement and diffusion of crime control benefits. Criminology 44:549–92.
West, Donald James, and David P. Farrington. 1973. Who Becomes Delinquent? Second Report of the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development. Oxford, U.K.: Crane, Rus-sak.
Wikstrom, Per-Olof, Dietrich Oberwittler, Kyle Treiber, and Beth Hardie. 2012. ¨ Breaking Rules: The Social and Situational Dynamics of Young People’s Urban Crime. Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press.
Wilcox, Pamela, and John Eck. 2011. Criminology of the unpopular. Criminology & Pub-lic Policy 10:473–82.
Wilcox, Pamela, Kenneth C. Land, and Scott C. Hunt. 2003. Criminal Circumstance: A Dynamic Multicontextual Criminal Opportunity Theory. New York: Walter de Gruys-ter.
Wolfgang, Marvin E., Robert M. Figlio, and Thorsten Sellin. 1972. Delinquency in a Birth Cohort. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Zipf, George Kingsley. 1949. Human Behavior and the Principle of Least Effort. Oxford, U.K.: Addison-Wesley.
David Weisburd is the Distinguished Professor of Criminology, Law and Society at George Mason University and the Walter E. Meyer Professor of Law and Criminal Justice at The Hebrew University. His current research interests are focused on the criminology of place, policing, and research methods.
ليست هناك تعليقات:
إرسال تعليق