NCJ Number
136992
Date Published
1990
Length
57 pages
Annotation
This paper assesses the factors that make a geographic area attractive or unattractive for crime and disorder and then reviews the tools that police may use to study environments.
Abstract
The first chapter provides an overview of the relationship between geographical factors and policing, outlines the major geographic factors that contribute to crime, and discusses how such factors appear in the spatial (geographical) dimension as well as how a working knowledge of the factors and their interrelationships may be useful in policing. The second chapter addresses the issue of geographical scale or the degree of magnification used to view problems. This chapter also considers the concept of unevenness of distributions in space and time and the consequences of this unevenness. Most aggravated assaults, for example, occur between 4 pm and 2 am and tend to be concentrated in certain neighborhoods. The chapter concludes with a discussion of how spatial and temporal processes interact to produce dynamic patterns of crime. The third chapter focuses on tools that can be used in geographical analyses. The emphasis is on the use of maps, combined with statistical analysis for the purpose of identifying problem locations that require a specialized police response. 62 references and appended supplementary data