Crime Concentration in London, UK

• In Event: Posters I

Abstract

There is a growing body of research on crime and place and found that there are strong evidences that crime is tightly coupled to place (Weisburd et al, 2012; Weisburd and Telep 2014). Therefore, crime is high concentrated at micro geographic areas (Weisburd 2015, Eck and Weisburd, 1995; Welsh and Farrington, 2012). Hot spots policing is based on the law of concentrations of crime at place (Weisburd 2015; Weisburd and Amram 2014). In order to generalize the law of crime concentrations, more case studies are required. In this paper, Metropolitan Police Service area in the United Kingdom is selected and examined whether there are similar findings of crime concentration at micro geographical areas from studies conduced with US cities. According to the research findings, there is crime concentration that about 60 percent of total crime occurred at 5 percent of micro-geographic areas (street segments). This finding supports the law of concentrations of crime at place in the United Kingdom and also suggests that place-based crime prevention practices such as hot spots policing is recommended as a cost-effective crime control.

Authors

• Sang Jun Park, George Mason University

• Chunghyeon Seo, Indiana University of Pennsylvania