| The importance of place in the etiology of crime has gained popularity in recent years. Place-based factors are essential to the recently elaborated theories of routine activities and environmental criminology, as well as to restatements of more traditional criminological theories such as social disorganization. In addition, recent technological advances in desktop computers and Geographic Information System (GIS) software technology have enabled researchers and practitioners to begin exploring spatial data in new and innovative ways. Finally, recent innovations in criminal justice practice, such as problem-oriented policing and community justice partnerships, have relied on place-based information for targeting and evaluating intervention strategies. Related to these theoretical, practical, and technological advances, it has been suggested that a focus on "place" is often a more appropriate unit of analysis than individuals. In fact, evidence seems to support this contention in that places have been found to be more often recidivistic than are people. The purpose of the proposed paper is to describe the criminal careers of places in one large Eastern U.S. city. Twenty years of police incident data will be examined to describe such factors as the proportion of recidivistic places in the city, the time between offenses, and the stability of offense types at each place. |
Updated 05/20/2006