Dangerous Places: Examining the Spatial Distribution and Stability of Sexual Crime Over Time

• In Event: Posters I

Abstract

Most research on sexual offending has focused on the pathologies of the person committing the crime independent of the environment in which it is committed. When the unit of analysis is the context of the offense, research suggests that crimes, particularly those of a predatory nature, are not uniformly distributed throughout the landscape. There is a lack of research, however, that examines “crime at places” specifically for sexual assaults, especially within a Canadian context. Thus, the current study utilizes the Police Information Retrieval System – a police database used by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police that contains information on all contact occurrences as well as the individuals involved in these events – to analyze the spatial distribution of 2180 sexual assaults that occurred between August 1, 2002 to July 31, 2006 within a medium-sized city in British Columbia. To determine whether these events cluster in space, kernel density analyses are conducted considering three spatial scales of analyses. A spatial point pattern test is then used to determine if the spatial distribution of these events is stable over this five-year period. Findings are discussed in light of situational crime prevention and crime prevention through environmental design.

Authors

• Ashley Nicole Hewitt, Simon Fraser University

• Eric Beauregard, Simon Fraser University

• Martin Andresen, Simon Fraser University

• Patricia L. Brantingham, Simon Fraser University