NCJ Number
74011
Editor(s)
D E Georges-Abeyie,
K D Harries
Date Published
1980
Length
307 pages
Annotation
This volume presents studies and academic treatises by geographers, criminologists, sociologists, and urban planners interpreting criminal justice phenomena from applied, psychospatial, methodological, interurban, and intraurban viewpoints. It offers a sampler of the social ecology and geography of crime for students interested in spatially oriented crime studies.
Abstract
One essay gives an extensive review of the American social ecological and social geographical approach to the study of adult crime and juvenile delinquency (i.e., of research which utilizes area concepts of crime occurrence and criminal residence). The author concludes that the value of crime area research will only be increased by more complete and accurate information about crime. Another essay views British criminological research with a spatial focus and a particular reference to the effect of public housing on the social geography of British cities. One author contends that geographic analysis must progress beyond purely descriptive ecological studies and formulate some theoretical constructs which may lead to explanations of the criminal spatial structure. Further, a lawyer-criminologist argues that on the procedural, substantive, and perceptual levels, the legal environment of crime involves the spatial interrelationships of people and their surroundings. Another essay compares the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) and the National Crime Survey (NCS) in 26 American cities and regresses NCS and UCR rate differences on some ecological variables. Building on a number of earlier interurban studies, another paper focuses on a specific aspect of the socioeconomic structure of cities -- the mixture of employment and occupation as it relates to crime rates. Also given is a temporal perspective on the correlates of metropolitan crime in 1960 and 1970. Another series of papers contributes a variety of approaches to intraurban analysis. Authors examine social areas in a suburban county using cluster analysis, promote a centrographic analysis of crime, discuss criminal mobility and social characteristics with emphasis on spatial planning, focus on juvenile crime, and present an empirical case study of homicide. The final set of essays posits the belief that certain sectors of the public have faulty perceptions of the relative danger and safety of different urban neighborhoods. These authors examine the utility of studying urban crime from a perspective based on the criminal's perception of the urban milieu and argue for the potential usefulness of cognitive mapping procedures in the spatial study of criminal behavior. An author and subject index is included, and tables and illustrations accompany most essays. Notes follow each essay.