The paper that I reviewed for Assignment 3 was titled: The Edge Effect: Exploring High Crime Zones near Residential Neighborhoods. It was published in 2013 by Justin Song, Valerie Spicer, and Patricia Brantingham.

The overall presentation and legibility of the paper was quite good. Song et al. included several diagrams that aided in comprehending their methodology. The tables that summarized their findings on crime distribution were also helpful. The paper was overall well-written and clear, although there were a couple grammatical errors noted. Furthermore, they did not include maps of their final results, which would have enhanced the paper. Perhaps this was not done due to privacy or ethical issues, but this was not discussed. It may also be noted that 2 years after this paper was published, the main researcher (Justin Song) published another study that continued analysis of crime edges: Crime on the edges: patterns of crime and land use change (Song et al., 2015). This paper further investigates how small changes in the distance from an edge has significant impacts on crime rates. It compares crimes rates from a wider scope, including Burnaby, Coquitlam-Port Coquitlam, and Surrey. Unfortunately it does not include other socio-economic factors as were missing from this paper as well.

Overall, the score given to this paper is 8/10.