Studying the Social Ecology of Crime in Southern California: An Introduction to the ILSSC

• In Event: Poster Session II

Abstract

The Irvine Laboratory for the Study of Space and Crime (ILSSC) is dedicated to researching the social ecology of crime and providing scientifically-informed insights about crime to the public. ILSSC investigates the community context of crime at various spatial scales by incorporating administrative, government, open and big data with cutting-edge geospatial and statistical methods. This poster highlights three projects reflecting our mission. 1) The *Southern California Crime Study* (SCCS) is a large-scale effort to collect incident-level crime data from police agencies in the region. The project yielded data for 2,740 of the 3,852 census tracts in the region, covering 219 of the 341 cities and 83.3 percent of the region's population. Parts of this dataset will be made publicly accessible. 2) The *Southern California Regional Crime Report* annually reports crime rates to facilitate comparisons between cities within the region. The Report presents standardized crime rates across cities, adjusts for city sociodemographic characteristics, and forecasts future crime trends in the region. 3) The *ILSSC Crime Index* utilizes open government data from cities across the nation to examine monthly crime trends. The Index is an invaluable tool in our mission to boost public knowledge about crime and crime trends in U.S. communities.

Authors

• John R Hipp, University of California, Irvine

• Charis E. Kubrin, University of California, Irvine

• Christopher Jay Bates, University of California, Irvine

• Nicholas Branic, University of California, Irvine

• Christopher Contreras, University of California, Irvine

• Benjamin J Forthun, University of California, Irvine

• Young-an Kim, University of California, Irvine

• Michelle D Mioduszewski, University of California, Irvine

• Rylan Simpson, University of California, Irvine

• Seth A. Williams, University of California Irvine