The Criminology of Place

David Weisburd is Walter E. Meyer Professor of Law and Criminal Justice and Director of the Institute of Criminology of the Hebrew University Faculty of Law and Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Maryland, College Park. Elizabeth Groff is Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice at Temple University.Sue-Ming Yang is Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice at Georgia State University.

"No one in policing, probation or city government can afford not to read this book. David Weisburd and his colleagues have assembled the most comprehensive account ever of where crime happens. Ignoring what they say is like ignoring a tornado warning." -- Lawrence W. Sherman, Wolfson Professor of Criminology, Cambridge University, and Distinguished University Professor, University of Maryland, College Park."Criminology has been invigorated by an ecological tradition that takes variation in crime across neighborhoods as its unit of analysis-not the individual. Weisburd, Groff, and Yang drill down further and examine variation in crime by street segments within neighborhoods. Enriching and extending the ecological tradition, The Criminology of Place derives new insights and provides the fullest explanation yet of how "micro places" influence theincidence of crime. The book is a welcome and important contribution to criminology with distinct policy implications." -- Robert J. Sampson, Henry Ford II Professor of the Social Sciences, Harvard University and author of Great American City: Chicago and the Enduring Neighborhood Effect"This is a very important book for policy-makers, practitioners and academics. The authors carefully and systematically build their case that effective crime prevention efforts must be focused first on a small number of high crime problem places. The detail of their arguments transforms hotspot policing and prevention in the same way keyhole surgery has transformed medical care. Their case is persuasive and, above all, evidence based." -- Peter Neyroud CBE QPM, University of Cambridge and Former Chief Constable and Chief Executive of the National Policing Improvement Agency"The Criminology of Place represents an important advance in our understanding of the nature of urban crime problems. It is very well written and comprehensive in its coverage of relevant empirical and theoretical criminological research. The book also presents new data on and empirical analyses of the nature of crime problems at places. The visually-striking color maps and graphs provide clear and easy-to-understand summaries of the authors' keyresearch findings and arguments. This book is a must read for city managers, politicians, police executives, community leaders, and others interested in dealing with urban crime problems in a more effective way." --Criminal Law and Criminal Justice Books

• Dedication ; Acknowledgements ; Chapter 1: Introduction ; Chapter 2: Putting Crime in its Place ; Chapter 3: Crime Concentrations and Crime Patterns at Places ; Chapter 4: The Importance of Street Segments in the Production of the Crime Problem ; Chapter 5: Concentrations of Crime Opportunities ; Chapter 6: Are Processes of Social Disorganization Relevant to the Criminology of Place? ; Chapter 7: Understanding Developmental Patterns of Crime at Street Segments ; Chapter 8: Conclusions ; Appendix 1: Trajectory Analysis Model Selection and Diagnostic Statistics ; Appendix 2: Ripley's K Function ; Appendix 3: Cross-K Function ; Appendix 4: Data Collection ; Appendix 5: Additional Statistical Models ; References ; Index