Trajectories of Violence in Toronto, Ontario

• In Event: Crime and Place: Predicting and Understanding Crime over Time

Abstract

Research in the crime at places literature has consistently shown that crime concentrates in a relatively small number of micro-places and remains stable over time. However, there is relatively little research that investigates the nature of those micro-places in order to understand them. This is largely a pragmatic issue because very little spatial information is available at the micro-place level. In this paper, we contribute to the crime and place literature using small areal census units. We are able to show similar levels of crime concentration in these census units with qualitatively similar trajectories over time. We are also able to show, using census data and binary and multinomial logistic regression, that our standard social disorganization and routine activity theory variables tend to predict violent crime trajectories well. Moreover, our traditional spatial theories of crime perform best when trying to explain moderate level trajectories but not high level trajectories.

Authors

• Sara K Thompson, Ryerson University

• Martin A Andresen, Simon Fraser University