GIS and Crime
Crime analysis has a lot to do with understanding human behaviour.
Routine activity theory: this theory focuses on the situations of crimes. It states crime is relatively unaffected by social causes such as poverty, inequality, and unemployment. It is affected by the daily routines of people. RAT predicts that “residential homes are burglarized during weekdays in the daytime, commercial properties are burglarized during the weekend and nighttime hours” (Klinkenberg lecture notes 2017).
Demographics are important because you can’t just look at crime, there are many more variables that could be causal. For example:
- the presence of children,
- renting versus owning,
- married versus single,
- income, etc.
But of course, we cannot forget about the spatial attributes. Commercial and residential spaces are not randomly located. Zoning has a huge impact on who lives where, and how the demographic make-up of the area is organized.
Two other important theories in Crime analysis is Rational Choice Theory; this theory states that most offenders make a rational decision to commit an offense. And Criminal Pattern Theory. This theory states that offenders will often concentrate in areas that are known to them. They will also look for targets that have no guardians or place managers. This theory gives us some insight into what an offender is thinking when they decide to commit a crime (Klinkenberg lecture notes 2017).