Gang violence predictability: Using risk terrain modeling to study gang homicides and gang assaults in East Los Angeles

2018 ◽  
Vol 58 ◽  
pp. 10-21 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Valasik
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
Gang Violence ◽  
East Los Angeles ◽  
Terrain Modeling ◽  
Risk Terrain Modeling

scholarly journals Using Risk Terrain Modeling to Predict Homeless Related Crime in Los Angeles, California

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Youngmin Yoo ◽  
Andrew Palmer Wheeler
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
Original Data ◽  
Homeless Shelters ◽  
Grid Cells ◽  
Terrain Modeling ◽  
Risk Terrain Modeling ◽  
Spatial Strategies ◽  
Victimization Risk ◽  
Drug Arrests ◽  
Micro Grid

We apply Risk Terrain Modeling (RTM) to identify the factors that predict homeless related crime at micro grid cells in Los Angeles, CA. We find that place based factors predicting whether homeless individuals are victimized or the offender being homeless are largely consistent with one another. Out of 26 different crime attractors and generators, prior drug arrests, homeless shelters, and bus stops are the three biggest factors in predicting homeless related crime. We show how the RTM model can effectively forecast future homeless related crimes as well. This suggests that targeted spatial strategies can reduce both homeless offending and victimization risk. Given that the majority of homeless individuals are only intermittently homeless, place based strategies may be a more an effective way to limit risk than strategies that focus on individuals. Original data and RTM output can be obtained at https://www.dropbox.com/s/a9kj0dkl8mcy90e/LA_Homeless_RTM.zip?dl=0.

Este lugar sí importa

2016 ◽  
Vol 93 (3) ◽  
pp. 52-74
Author(s):  
Laura Dominguez
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Historic Preservation ◽  
East Los Angeles ◽  
Popular Imagination ◽  
Cultural Importance ◽  
Communities Of Color

The evolution and construction of cultural identity and memory in unincorporated East Los Angeles, both in scholarship and the popular imagination, establishes a critical framework for understanding changing relationships between communities of color and the broader historic preservation movement. East Los Angeles embodies slowly shifting paradigms within the historic preservation movement that compel practitioners and advocates to contend with the meaning of seemingly ordinary places that have tremendous cultural importance within their communities.

Assessing the Differential Impact of Vacancy on Criminal Violence in the City of St. Louis, MO

2021 ◽  
pp. 073401682199679
Author(s):  
Branson Fox ◽  
Anne Trolard ◽  
Mason Simmons ◽  
Jessica E. Meyers ◽  
Matt Vogel
Keyword(s):  
Violent Crime ◽  
Situational Crime Prevention ◽  
Empirical Literature ◽  
Terrain Modeling ◽  
Criminal Violence ◽  
Aggravated Assault ◽  
Environmental Correlates ◽  
Risk Terrain Modeling ◽  
The City ◽  
North And South

This study employs risk terrain modeling to identify the spatial correlates of aggravated assault and homicide in St. Louis, MO. We build upon the empirical literature by (1) replicating recent research examining the role of vacancy in the concentration of criminal violence and (2) examining whether the environmental correlates of violence vary between north and south St. Louis, a boundary that has long divided the city along racial and socioeconomic lines. Our results indicate that vacancy presents a strong, consistent risk for both homicide and aggravated assault and that this pattern emerges most clearly in the northern part of the city which is majority African American and has suffered chronic disinvestment. The concentration of criminal violence in South City is driven primarily by public hubs including housing, transportation, and schools. Our results underscore the importance of vacancy as a driver of the spatial concentration of violent crime and point to potential heterogeneity in risk terrain modeling results when applied to large metropolitan areas. Situational crime prevention strategies would be well served to consider such spatial contingencies as the risk factors driving violent crime are neither uniformly distributed across space nor uniform in their impact on criminal violence.

scholarly journals Vulnerability and Exposure to Crime: Applying Risk Terrain Modeling to the Study of Assault in Chicago

2015 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 529-548 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leslie W. Kennedy ◽  
Joel M. Caplan ◽  
Eric L. Piza ◽  
Henri Buccine-Schraeder
Keyword(s):  
Terrain Modeling ◽  
Risk Terrain Modeling

The semiotics of the deictic field: Reckoning language and experience in East Los Angeles

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-49
Author(s):  
Dana Osborne
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
Mexican Americans ◽  
Critical Time ◽  
East Los Angeles ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Single Speaker ◽  
Symbolic Value ◽  
Formative Experiences ◽  
The City

AbstractThis analysis examines the ways in which a single speaker, Ana, born in mid-century East Los Angeles, organizes and reflects upon her experiences of the city through language. Ana’s story is one that sheds light on the experiences of many Mexican Americans who came of age at a critical time in a transitioning L.A., and the slow move of people who had been up until mid-century relegated largely in and around racially and socioeconomically segregated parts of L.A. These formative experiences are demonstrated to have informed the ways that speakers parse the social and geographical landscape along several dimensions, and this analysis interrogates the symbolic value of a special category of everyday language, deixis, to reveal the intersection between language and social experience in the cityscape of L.A. In this way, it is analytically possible to not only approach the habituation and reproduction of specific deictic fields as indexical of the ways that speakers parse the city, but also to demonstrate the ways in which key moments in the history of the city have shaped the emergence and meaning of those fields.

Explaining the directionality of gang violence with court records

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gisela Bichler ◽  
Alexis Norris ◽  
Citlalik Ibarra
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
Competitive Advantage ◽  
Crime Control ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Internal Conflict ◽  
Quadratic Assignment ◽  
Gang Violence ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Court Records ◽  
Explanatory Factors

Purpose Studies of gang violence typically use police reports to investigate the structure of gang conflict, but overreliance on a singular data source could impede crime control efforts. Extending networked criminology, this study aims to explore what court records reveal about the directionality of gang conflicts. Design/methodology/approach Controlling for the presence of a civil gang injunction (CGI), the authors use multivariate quadratic assignment procedure regression models to disentangle factors thought to account for structural patterns of gang violence mapped from 933 prosecutions involving 307 gangs associated with violent conflict affecting the City of Los Angeles (1998–2013). Specifically, the authors compare competitive advantage to the explanatory power of turf proximity. Findings One measure of turf proximity outperforms all other explanatory factors – gangs with turf centrally positioned in a turf adjacency matrix are significantly more likely to launch attacks, be victimized and exhibit the highest levels of imbalance in their violent involvements. Regarding competitive advantage, the number of cliques and level of internal conflict are significant. Finally, being subject to a CGI is associated with initiating violence. Originality/value Court cases offer a feasible alternative to police data when investigating patterns of intergroup street gang violence.

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