Environmental Criminology and Crime Prevention 1
Environmental Criminology and Crime Prevention
Jessica Paris
Criminology Department
University of South Florida
Abstract
Environmental Criminology and Crime Prevention 2
Environmental criminology has always been interested with the prevention of
crime, yet crime prevention has been difficult to define. In its origins, crime
prevention was used to describe many different behaviors. A man named Ronald
Clarke changed all that, he redefined crime prevention as reducing opportunities and
increasing risk for criminal activities and behaviors. Crime prevention was broken
down into three levels, and focusing on crime prevention, rather then criminal motives
became the main focus of criminologists. This dissertation asks the question of how
environmental criminology can advance the crime prevention facet of intelligence led
policing. To answer that question we must take a look at early criminological theory,
we must understand environmental criminology, understand GIS (Geographical
Information Systems), Crime Mapping and Crime Analysis. Most of all, we must
understand the difference between geographic profiling and environmental
criminology, and we must be familiar with the proactive nature of Intelligence Led
Policing.
Chapter 1: Introduction
Environmental Criminology and Crime Prevention 3
Many early theories and theorist had viewed crime as reflexive, meaning that
criminals were predetermined by their childhood upbringing and their socioeconomic
status in society. Ronald Clarke changed that, he reintroduced the idea of crime
prevention and how it could influence environmental criminology. Clarke felt that
criminals have preferences and options of how and when they commit crimes. “There
has been a shift in emphasis away from the sociological imagination to the
geographical imagination” (Hopkins 2009). And this radical shift made
criminologists focus on the prevention of crime, instead of criminal personalities and
criminal motives.
Environmental criminologists Brantingham and Brantingham (1981) had a lot
to due with this shift. They were the first to look at places with a disproportionate
level of criminal activity, and labeled environmental criminology as the study of the
fourth dimension. This “fourth dimension” was where and when crime occurs.
These places with a disproportionate level of criminal activity led us to look at crime
generators and crime attractors. Crime generators are places where large numbers of
people are attracted to for unrelated reasons of criminal motivation. These areas include
new transit routes and stations and/or the opening of a new bar or the opening of a new
shopping center. Crime attractors are the opposite of crime generators, in that, they are
particular places that present well known criminal opportunities and strongly motivate
criminal activities. These places include inner city ghettos and/or the opening of a
needle exchange clinic in a high area of crime.
Crime prevention, today, and environmental criminology had its foundations in
criminological theory. In France, Guerry and Quelet studied conviction rates for
Environmental Criminology and Crime Prevention 4
crimes that were committed in different geographical areas, discovering that crime
rates varied significantly depending on the geographical area. Shaw and McKay also
discovered that social disorganization is more prevalent in specified geographical
areas. The Concentric Zone Model labeled those disorganized areas of the city.
Environmental criminologists today integrate knowledge and techniques from several
different perspectives.
The concepts of environmental criminology have extensively educated “crime
mapping and crime analysis”. Crime mapping and crime analysis has become
progressively more important and central to the work of police agencies during the past
30 or so years. Today environmental criminology focuses on computer based
techniques and technology to not only explain, but more importantly to predict where
crime occurs.
Chapter 2: Problem Identification
Our advanced development of technology is how and why environmental
criminology today has progressed into a whole new world of crime prevention. This is
how environmental criminology is proactive, in not only understanding, but also
serving crime prevention. Artificial crime analysis and crime simulation is a new and
evolving area that “aims to generate individual crime events and gives rise to crime
patterns by operational zing criminology theories in a GIS-based computing
environment” (Liu 2008). This new research field links environmental criminology,
geography, and computer science.
GIS or Geographic Information Systems, as a ingredient in the crime prevention
process has considerably impacted law enforcements knowledge of the behavior of the
Environmental Criminology and Crime Prevention 5
offender and the connection to crime. This understanding has explained how law
enforcement operates and deals with crime prevention strategies.
Today, factors such
as offender residence, offender location, transportation routes and police patrol zones
(hot spots) facilitates problem solving techniques at a very new efficient level. And,
more sophisticated systems, such as The Rigel Profiler and Analyst are being regularly
developed.
Chapter 3: Link to ILP
“Environmental criminology is a field of study interested in the interactions
between criminals and the physical environment that surrounds them (Wang 2005).”
With our technological advancements environmental criminology has become
proactive, which is the main concept in defining something in the category of
Intelligence-Led Policing. To go further, we must analyze and predict where crime
will occur, to thus prevent it. “Geographic Profiling is a methodology for analyzing
the geographic locations of a linked series of crimes to determine the unknown
offenders most probable residence area (Wang 2005).” Understanding and implicated
environmental criminology and geographic profiling helps law enforcement to think
outside the box to predict and prevent crime.
Crime mapping and crime analysis were the stepping stones of how law
enforcement and geographic criminologist began their forward thinking processes.
Technology and GIS information systems helped to disrupt, prevent, and anticipate
crime and social harm, on a whole new level. It gives law enforcement a new sense of
control over crime prevention.
Environmental Criminology and Crime Prevention 6
Chapter 4: Literature Review and Discussion
Environmental criminologists use to care about what motivates someone to
commit a specific crime. Environmental criminologists now focus on places where
crime occurs and the characteristics of those places. Through the work of
environmental criminologists, new methods of crime management give solutions to
crime problems, which is useful to my study. Environmental criminology is
problem-orientated policing and is proactive.
To avoid confusion in the definition of crime prevention, we can use a
conceptual model that defines three levels of prevention. Primary crime preventions is
the physical and social environment that can provide opportunities for criminal acts.
Secondary crime prevention deals with early identification of likely offenders.
Tertiary crime prevention deals with intervening in actual offenders lives so that they
don’t commit further offenses. Crime prevention works at all three of these levels.
Based on the philosophy of environmental criminology, geographic profiling,
makes possible, a passage to crime scenarios and constructs a probability of the
offenders home base. Geographic profiling is based on crime pattern, routine activity
and rational choice theories from environmental criminology. Crime is viewed as the
“where and when” of the criminal act. Crime prevention is the task of every agency
found within the American criminal justice system. Because our environment is
dynamic, so must be our crime prevention activities.
Early environmental criminologists, such as Burgess’s Concentric Zone Model,
which involved research mapping of offender residences in large American cities, and
Shaw and McKay’s Chicago School, which found that crime and delinquents are
Environmental Criminology and Crime Prevention 7
transmitted by frequent contact with criminal traditions that have developed over time
in disorganized areas of the city, have been key in understanding the relationship
between offending and place. They also have strong practical value in crime
prevention and offender targeting.
According to the routine activity theory, for a crime to occur there must be three
things, a motivated offender, a appropriate target, and the absence of capable guardians.
To be able to use crime mapping, we must first be responsive to the offender, the
victim, crime and environment. The rhythms or flows of how people come and go are
important in understanding the geography of a given location. As Clarke had pointed
out criminal offenders are rational, they make choices that they hope to profit from.
Experience and learning is an important part of rational choice theory, which sees
behavior as adaptive. The importance of the powerful belief in the capacity of
“surveillance” to help control crime began with these theories.
Crime practitioners can learn from “previous offences” and “predictive
mapping” to reduce the risk of crime. Brantingham and Brantingham where not only
the first to shift our focus of crime prevention, they also applied the principles of
environmental criminology to recognize the geometry of crime. Their crime pattern
theory suggested that criminal acts will occur in areas where “the offender’s awareness
space intersects with an environment containing suitable targets at an acceptable level
of risk” (Wang 2005). In this, we have learned that criminals don’t pick their crime
locations randomly. Thus, victims are not secluded from their environments, and the
“target situation” must be reasonable before the crime can occur. Familiar landmarks
become part of a person’s consciousness, and criminals search for victims in these
Environmental Criminology and Crime Prevention 8
landmarks. These familiar landmarks are called anchor points.
Wang also discussed the three objectives to crime analysis. The first of these
objectives being, a diverse array of GIS applications, which includes crime mapping.
The second is new systems and techniques for geographic profiling, and the third is to
link the academics and practitioners for crime analysis and crime control.
The use of data processing, computer network resources and digital mapping
has become the leading research in environmental criminology. Geographic profiling
is centered around these concepts, and by understanding anchor points and with the
technology of today we have been able to create Geographic Information Systems
(GIS).
Artificial crime analysis and crime simulation is a “proactive”, and “up and
coming” research area. It was started just six years ago by a relatively small group of
environmental criminologists and geographers. They came together to create “virtual
city scopes and model crime patterns.” To create geographic profiles, geographic
profilers plot the coordinates of potential crime sites as data points into the analysis
software, and this data is available on the police records system.
The problem of repeat offenders, repeat victimization and repeat places of
crime, is essential in crime prevention strategies. These strategies of crime prevention
through environmental “handlers”, those who create geographic information systems
(GIS), can help prevent crimes. The environmental handlers use GIS to explain repeat
offending problems, and have been influential in preventing serious repeat offences.
Keith Harries accurately forecasts how crime mapping would evolve, he states
that “the hallmark of the first decade of so of the modern era of crime mapping was the
use of geographic information systems (GIS). Perhaps the next decade will see the
Environmental Criminology and Crime Prevention 9
integration of previously separate technologies such as global positioning systems
(GPS) and a wide range of local databases with relevance to policing and the World
Wide Web” (Anderson 2010). The Rigel geographic profiling software and the just
released Gemini Software are geographic targeting techniques that are the beginning of
the next generation of GIS, and maybe the beginning of global positioning systems
(GPS).
These programs displays criminals anchor points into a fine grid, which then
generates a three-dimensional probability graph, called a jeopardy surface. The
jeopardy surface is then superimposed over street maps of a given area, and precise
locations can be assessed. This forward thinking, proactive method prioritizes
suspects and addresses, emphasizing detailed geographic areas, which enables
investigators to focus their resources much more effectively.
A system called EMPACT has also been functional in preventing crime via
GPS. EMPACT involves tracking devices worn by criminal offenders. The device is
an ankle bracelet that electronically tracks the offenders location. All this tracked data
is then downloaded to a monitoring center. The offender incident and track data is
uploaded every night into the EMPACT system and is then immediately imported into
the local law enforcement agency’s records management system. This saves time by
eliminated data entry. The system was created by crime analysts, criminal
investigators, intelligence offers and probation/parole officers.
GIS and related geo-technologies, such as GPS tracking devices, The Rigel and
The Gemini have transformed crime mapping into a influential decision making tool
for law enforcement agencies, and computerized crime mapping has withstood rapid
Environmental Criminology and Crime Prevention 10
growth. Thus, creating a crime mapping atmosphere, where crime analysts and
investigators have the possibility to calculate and evaluate, at the click of a button,
“multi-jurisdictional crime patterns and offender tracking data”.
Chapter 5: Conclusion
This dissertation defines, crime prevention, environmental criminology and the
advancement of geographic profiling. It describes the difference between
environmental criminology and geographic profiling. It also, discusses how
geographic profiling is the practical and proactive facet of Intelligence Led Policing.
So, how does environmental criminology advances the crime prevention facet of
Intelligence Led Policing? Environmental criminology has advanced and evolved
crime prevention practices that address various problems across multiple social and
physical fields. While, geographic profiling is the future of how environmental
criminology will advance the crime prevention facet of Intelligence-Led Policing.
Geographic Profiling, Crime mapping, GIS, The Rigel and The Gemini are the
proactive Intelligence Led Policing facets of environmental criminology.
Environmental Criminology and Crime Prevention 11
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