Composed Cognitive Maps

Composed cognitive maps are a tool based on grounded theory and on Lynch's urban model of cognitive maps, which allow the transfer of information from ethnographic situations to general patterns, and to the so-called spatial dynamics. In criminological matters, they have been applied in the context of environmental and criminology of place to identify criminal situations, criminal patterns, and spatial dynamics of crime. The latter concept has allowed reliable diagnoses for the design of criminal policies. Their advantages are compared with traditional criminometric methods. It introduces a brief compilation of the existing literature on the subject. In a special way, this chapter shows how composed cognitive maps allowed the measurement of drug trafficking networks, police intelligence, and, above all, crime reduction.

Crime Hot Spots

Hot spots of crime, and the criminology of place more generally, deviate from the traditional paradigm of criminology, in which the primary assumption and goal is to explain who is likely to commit crime and their motivations, and to explore interventions aimed at reducing individual criminality. Alternatively, crime hot spots account for the “where” of crime, specifically referring to the concentration of crime in small geographic areas. The criminology of place demands a rethinking in regard to how we understand the crime problem and offers alternate ways to predict, explain, and prevent crime. While place, as large geographic units, has been important since the inception of criminology as a discipline, research examining crime concentrations at a micro-geographic level has only recently begun to be developed. This approach has been facilitated by improvements to data availability, technology, and the understanding of crime as a function of the environment. The new crime and place paradigm is rooted in the past three decades of criminological research centered on routine activity theory, crime concentrations, and hot spots policing. The focus on crime hot spots has led to several core empirical findings. First, crime is meaningfully concentrated, such that a large proportion of crime events occur at relatively few places within larger geographies like cities. This may be termed the law of crime concentration at places (see Weisburd, 2015). Additionally, most hot spots of crime are stable over time, and thus present promising opportunities for crime prevention. Crime hot spots vary within higher geographic units, suggesting both that there is a loss of information at higher levels of aggregation and that there are clear “micro communities” within the larger conceptualization of a neighborhood. Finally, crime at place is predictable, which is important for being able to understand why crime is concentrated in one place and not another, as well as to develop crime prevention strategies. These empirical characteristics of crime hot spots have led to the development of successful police interventions to reduce crime. These interventions are generally termed hot spots policing.

The Importance of High Offender Neighborhoods within Environmental Criminology

This chapter argues that the study of the geographical distribution of crimes is significantly enriched when it takes into account the location of offender residences, especially high offender-rate neighborhoods. It first explains why the study of high offender neighborhoods is vital to the study of the criminology of place, both in explanatory terms and as regards implications for crime prevention. It then shows that high offender neighborhoods are not all the same, and that the single concept of social disorganization is not adequate to explain these differences. The conclusion summarizes the argument and considers its implications for the important question of the optimum units of analysis in the study of environmental criminology.

Place and time in the Criminology of Place

This article evaluates developments in the ecological analysis of crime, which have found their most recent expression in a Criminology of Place. We argue that theoretical and methodological deficiencies are evident in the Criminology of Place and associated literatures with respect to their underlying treatment of place, time and causation. Big Data holds promise for helping address these shortfalls, but dangers also. The successful advance of the Criminology of Place requires elevating the why question to equal status with those of where and what in the analysis of crime. Ultimately, the paper positions the progress towards and prospects for a multi-scalar and time sensitive theoretical and empirical model of the Criminology of Place.