Rating Places: Utilizing user-generated content to assess place management as a mechanism for crime prevention in Belgium and the UK

• In Event: WG-PLACE 1: Research on crime, place and time

Abstract

Prior research shows that crime is highly concentrated at micro places and specific times. However, little is known about the specific mechanisms preventing these concentrations, which is a barrier for effective crime prevention. New and emerging data sources provide unique measurement opportunities to enhance both broader and deeper insights into mechanisms producing particular outcomes, e.g. crime. This study assesses how place management is related to crime at specific settings and whether specific crime types are related to specific types of places. Place management is defined as a set of mechanisms that owners, their employees or others (i.e. place managers) use to organize the physical and social environment of a location so that the functions of the place can be carried out. From this perspective, place managers usually try to keep out and reduce crime, but some of them fail. We have used user-generated reviews of places from Google Places in Ghent, Belgium (n = 676,591) and London, UK (n = 795,237) to measure place management and police-registered crime data to measure five specific crime types. This secondary data analysis consists of correlational and spatial regression analyses that are used to enhance insights in the role of place management in crime concentrations at the street segment level. Our findings suggest that user-generated reviews of places provide an accurate indicator for place management and that subsequent measures are related to crime. This study indicates the importance of exploring new and emerging data sources as unique measurement opportunities in criminology and criminal justice to enhance insight in our understanding of the crime prevention mechanisms. For crime prevention, these findings suggest that improving place management at specific (crime-generating) (types of) places might be an effective intervention to decrease crime and increase community safety.

Authors

• Thom Snaphaan, PhD Researcher, Institute for International Research on Criminal Policy, Department of Criminology, Criminal Law and Social Law, Ghent University

• Wim Hardyns, Professor, Institute for International Research on Criminal Policy, Department of Criminology, Criminal Law and Social Law, Ghent University

• Lieven J. R. Pauwels, Professor, Institute for International Research on Criminal Policy, Department of Criminology, Criminal Law and Social Law, Ghent University

• Kate Bowers, Professor, Department of Security and Crime Science, University College London