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Facilities, opportunity, and crime: An exploratory analysis of places in two urban neighborhoods

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Crime Prevention and Community Safety Aims and scope

I’ve been too many places. I’m like the bad penny.

(Jack Nicholson, actor)

Abstract

Crime prevention strategists have long been examining the impact of land use on crime, particularly the effects of non-residential land use in the form of facilities. Places like bars, motels, schools, convenience stores, and check-cashing centers have been examined in relation to crime to the point that it seems we now have a “criminology of the unpopular” (Wilcox and Eck in Criminol Public Policy 10(2):473–482, 2011), whereby places of a particular type are assumed to inherently offer crime opportunity. However, other theoretical and empirical work suggests that facility type may not matter and that specific characteristics and contexts associated with crime opportunity at places should be measured as opposed to assuming that broad categories of land uses typically generate crime (e.g., Brantingham and Brantingham in Stud Crime Crime Prev 8(1):7–26, 1999; Eck et al. in Crime Prev Stud 21:225, 2007; Hart and Miethe in Secur J 27(2):180–193, 2014; Smith et al. in Criminology 38(2):489–524, 2000; Wilcox and Eck in Criminol Public Policy 10(2):473–482, 2011). As an exploratory test of this latter idea, the present study uses observational data collected repeatedly at a small number of places over a one-year period—including land-use types that are not typically associated with crime (i.e., gardens)—in order to examine whether land-use parcels of the same type but with differing criminal opportunities have differing levels of crime.

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Notes

  1. Hot spots are defined as “small places in which the occurrence of crime is so frequent that it is highly predictable, at least over a one year period” (Sherman 1995, p. 36).

  2. Potentially criminogenic places were ATMs and banks, alcohol stores, bars, check-cashing stores, neighborhood corner stores, drug treatment centers, high schools, neighborhood parks, subway stops, fast-food restaurants, pawn shops, and public housing communities.

  3. UCR data were chosen due to the difficulties in alternative crime measures. Specifically, calls for service tend to be a reflection of people’s willingness to call police rather than level of crime per se.

  4. Due to the small sample sizes for each site type, all sites were combined (N = 41) to assess the bivariate correlations of crime rate with interval-level measures of criminal opportunity.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice, Metropolitan State University, 9110 Brooklyn Boulevard, Brooklyn Park, MN, 55445, USA

    Lesli Blair

  2. School of Criminal Justice, University of Cincinnati, 660NA Teacher-Dyer Hall, Clifton Avenue, Cincinnati, OH, 45221, USA

    Pamela Wilcox

  3. School of Criminal Justice, University of Cincinnati, 650 Teacher-Dyer Hall, Clifton Avenue, Cincinnati, OH, 45221, USA

    John Eck

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  1. Lesli Blair
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  2. Pamela Wilcox
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  3. John Eck
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Correspondence to Lesli Blair.

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Blair, L., Wilcox, P. & Eck, J. Facilities, opportunity, and crime: An exploratory analysis of places in two urban neighborhoods. Crime Prev Community Saf 19, 61–81 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41300-016-0011-2

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