NCJ Number
182548
Date Published
2000
Length
13 pages
Annotation
This chapter examines the usefulness of analyzing crime patterns by city blocks with chloropleth maps and statistical analyses; the analysis focuses on robbery and its association with proximity to schools.
Abstract
The study pursues three objectives. The first is to understand the social and environmental characteristics of crime locations. This objective also includes identifying the effects of other characteristics of high-crime places that may be changed by public agencies, such as zoning boards or social service agencies; an effort is made to estimate the effect of both fixes and malleable location characteristics on the incidence of crime. The second objective is to illustrate crime's spatial variation within very small areas, specifically police sectors. Chloropleth maps show the block-by-block variation in robberies. Chloropleth maps of crime by blocks have several advantages. They permit viewing crime variations across small areas for an entire city or borough from a letter-size transparency. The second advantage is that there is no software-imposed limit on the number of "hotness" of "hot spots." The third objective is to "go beyond a pretty map" whose interpretation can vary among individuals, depending on their particular perspectives. The goal is to statistically evaluate the combined and separate associations of city block characteristics with crime. The example of school proximity and robbery used in this study shows the feasibility of such analyses and their potential for helping to avoid incorrect inferences. 2 tables, 3 notes, and 22 references