1 March 2017
This lecture started with a review of the three crime theories that we touched upon in the beginning of the semester:
- Routine activity theory, which states that in order for crime to occur, there must be a motivated offender, a target and the absence of a guardian.
- Rational choice theory states that, just like any noncriminal decision that offenders make, offenders choose to commit crime because they feel that the benefits outweigh the costs.
- Criminal pattern theory states that offenders tend to commit crime in areas that they are familiar with. This particular theory highlights how geography is an important consideration in crime analysis–the spatial distribution of crime events is usually not random. The fact that crime follows a geographic pattern allows us to use GIS to analyse these patterns in order to track, predict, and solve crimes (Klinkenberg, 2017).
Geographic profiling was also discussed. This investigative technique aims to predict an offender’s place of residence by looking at the geographic location of a series of related crime.
References
Klinkenberg, B. (2017). GIS and Crime. [Lecture notes]. Retrieved from http://ibis.geog.ubc.ca/courses/geob479/notes/Handouts/Lecture07.pdf