Criminal Justice Review

A renewed interest in understanding the relationship of the built environment with neighborhood crime patterns has encouraged researchers to utilize novel methods (e.g., risk terrain modeling) to better examine the influence of environmental risk factors on types of crime. The current study engages with this research by operationalizing neighborhoods using Hipp and Boessen’s egohood strategy and using Drawve’s aggregate neighborhood risk of crime measure to assess the relationship of a neighborhood’s physical environment with its spatial vulnerability of experiencing a homicide. Findings demonstrate that the physical environment was a significant predictor of neighborhood homicide; however, social structural neighborhood characteristics were more important. This suggests crime prevention strategies like crime prevention though environmental design or blight remediation may provide prudent and straightforward methods to inhibit lethal violence in a community in the short run, but that addressing a neighborhood’s social structural characteristics may be more effective at reducing homicides in the long term.

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.

Studies of crime hotspot forecasts use various metrics to describe different characteristics of prediction patterns. However, few investigations consider how the stability of crime hotspot, estimated at relatively short temporal intervals, can impact hotspot policing efforts. In response, using address-level incident location data that were collected from six law enforcement agencies in the United States, the current study examines the daily stability of crime hotspots that were estimated over a 1-year period. Results suggest that micro-temporal stability patterns in crime hotspot forecasts are dependent on crime type, jurisdiction, and the interaction between these two factors. Implications for crime analysis and future research are discussed.

National victimization data suggest less than 50% of violent crime incidents are reported to the police. Official reports of crime to police, however, are often the only type of data used for the analysis of violence problems, the identification of geographic concentrations of violent crime, and the selection of targets for police and prevention resources. Yet, the question remains, are estimates of violent crime prevalence and location distorted from a unilateral reliance on police data? Here, we examine whether emergency medical service (EMS) data collected by the fire department are spatially concentrated in the same way as police data and whether these data can help identify instances of violence unreported to police in the city of Seattle between 2009 and 2011. We find high levels of concentration in both police and EMS data and evidence that new information is learned about the location of violence problems from utilizing multiple data sources. Overall, these findings contribute to a small but growing body of work that demonstrates the utility of nonconventional data in the identification of crime and harm concentrations of interest.

Building on the growing literature of the spatial examination of criminality, this study examines the stability of crime related to mass gathering events over time. Specifically, we examine the impacts of baseball games on assault patterns in the Bronx and Queens, New York, using a nonparametric permutation approach to examine the spatial distribution of point patterns at the neighborhood level over multiple seasons. Findings demonstrate that Mets and Yankees game days have significant impact on the number of assaults when compared to a sample of similar non–game days providing further support for environmental criminological theories. Implications for practitioner use of the tool as well as its use as a method for researchers who seek to compare crime event patterns across several temporal bandwidths are discussed.

This study examines temporal variations in the spatial influence of environmental features, such as bars and vacant buildings, on criminal behavior across microlevel places. Specifically, 17 environmental risk factors and their spatial influences are identified for calendar year 2014 street robberies in Jersey City, NJ. To explore temporal variation, risk factors and their spatial influences on crime are identified across 12 discrete 2-hr time intervals. The results demonstrate that the risk factors for street robbery varied across the course of a day. In fact, mapping the most vulnerable places for street robbery revealed that while many of the same environmental features remain high risk throughout the day, their influence varied. These results suggested that there was a temporality to robbery and that it is likely due to the interaction between physical vulnerabilities from the built environment and social behaviors of people at these places. This demonstrates the importance of considering the temporal dimension of criminal behavior as results show that people use and interact with their environment differently throughout the course of the day.