NCJ Number
125454
Date Published
1990
Length
57 pages
Annotation
Law enforcement is examined from a geographical perspective, with emphasis on the need to analyze the social and physical contexts of crime and to understand the significance of both quantitative and qualitative approaches to the analysis of community problems.
Abstract
An overview explains the major geographical factors that contribute to crime, including the location of offenders, the distribution of targets and victims, offenders' mental maps, law enforcement practices, urban design, and neighborhood population and social dynamics. Additional sections examine the costs and benefits that result from differing levels of detail in analyzing a problem, the unevenness of crime distribution in space and time, and the use of maps in making geographical analyses. The discussion concludes that geographical analysis either with or without microcomputers can provide police officers with useful tools for conducting situational analyses and improving prevention and control. Figures, appended tables, and 62 references.