Exploring & Comparing the Spatial Patterns of Different Robbery Outcomes

• In Event: Communities and Place: Environmental Criminology

Abstract

Environmental criminology emphasizes the importance of crime specificity. This is true between crime types (e.g. robberies versus burglaries) as well as within crime types (e.g. street robberies versus commercial robberies). Therefore, it may be important to operationalize crime outcomes more specifically for environmental criminology research. This study uses robbery data from Cincinnati, Ohio that has been qualitatively coded into specific robbery types to examine the spatial patterns of “street robberies” defined in two different ways: (1) one based on this coding procedure and (2) the other based on a police-designated definition. Additionally, total robberies are inspected to illustrate the importance of crime specificity in crime analysis. Using different methods to explore spatial crime concentration, this study compares spatial patterns for these three outcomes and assesses whether spatial clustering is sensitive to robbery operationalizations.

Authors

• Jeffrey E. Clutter, Marywood University

• Cory P. Haberman, University of Cincinnati