1.1-Introduction
A crime is an act committed violating laws which prohibits and authorizes punishment for its commissions (Wilson and Hernstein, 1998). Across the UK crime is not evenly distributed, causing locations to experience higher rates of criminal activities. Locations experiencing concentrated rates of crime are referred to as crime hot spots. A hot spot is understood as an area having greater than average number of criminal events, or a location where people are at risk of victimisation higher than average (Eck, 2005).
Criminal behaviour is the product of a systematic process involving the complex interactions between individuals, societal and economic factors. Research reveals that socio-economic characteristics are linked with
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3.1-Results/Discussion
3.2-Police Data
Data was collected from ‘data police’ website to determine the locations of all crimes taking place, to investigate where criminal activity was most likely to take place (Figure three). From the crime data results showed:
• Crime was not evenly distributed.
• Crime was highest near coastal towns including Scarborough, Whitby and Filey.
• The highest crime rate was in the coastal town Scarborough.
• Lower crime tended to be away from coastal and town locations.
Due to clear locations of where crime was undertaken, further analysis was taken to determine the point density and the crime hot spots. A point density map calculates a magnitude per unit area from points features that fall within a specific neighbourhood around the cell and shows where the highest and lowest locations of crime are. Whilst hot spots analysis identifies the statistically significant spatial clusters of high crime and low crime.
Point density supported previous results that the highest crime rates were along the three coastlines including Filey, Whitby and Scarborough. However, it showed that there were significantly higher rates of crime in Scarborough and Whitby, but Scarborough had
Why are some neighborhoods more prone to experience violent episodes than others? What is the extent and in what sociologically measurable ways do communities contribute to the causation and prevention of crime in their neighborhoods? Are neighborhood-level predictors adequate to explain differences in violent crime rates in the respective communities? These are some of the questions addressed by this statistically intense paper published in Science 1997, by Sampson, Raudenbush and Earls.
In addition to biological and psychological elements, there are the social factors that can influence people to engage in criminal activity. As a matter of fact, social and economic pressures play a major role in the cause of crime, since people are more likely to break the law when they have nothing else to lose. Therefore, the biological, psychological, and social factors should all be considered when trying to establish a reason for every crime. Word Count = 1,378
Nicholas, S., Walker, A. & Kershaw, C. (2007). Crime in England and Wales 2006/2007. Home Office Statistical Bulletin, Development And Statistics Directorate..
One of the most common definition of ‘crime’ comes from the Labour Government (2007) quoted in Muncie, Talbot and Walters (2010) “Labour Governments ‘Respect’ website 2007 Crime is doing something forbidden by law. That could mean stealing a mobile phone, vandalism, graffiti, mugging, stealing or taking and selling drugs” (Muncie, Talbot and Walters, 2010, p. 3). This definition of crime is very much focused on the ideas of what criminologists would class as ‘street crimes’, crimes that are generally committed by the poorer people within society, young people who come from council estates. However this definition of ‘street crimes’ omits the crimes that are committed in ‘invisible spaces’ which tends to focus more on: domestic abuse, gender abuse and people trafficking and the ‘invisible crimes’ committed by the powerful elites of the world. These crimes tend to be focused on white collar crimes, environmental pollution and illegal arms dealings amongst many more. This definition of crime omits behaviours that are potentially more harmful, that could cause greater pain or loss (Muncie, Talbot and Walters, 2010, p. 3).
For decades, researchers have tried to determine why crime rates are stronger and why different crimes occur more often in different locations. Certain crimes are more prevalent in urban areas for several reasons (Steven D. Levitt, 1998, 61). Population, ethnicity, and inequality all contribute to the more popular urban. Determining why certain crimes occur more often than others is important in Criminal Justice so researchers can find a trend and the police can find a solution (Rodrigo R. Soares, 2004, 851). The Uniform Crime Reports are a method in which the government collects data, and monitors criminal activity in the United States (Rodrigo R. Soares, 2004, 851). They have both positive and negative attributes that have influenced
...e of the risk for offenders or reducing the attractiveness of potential targets has the great impact on criminal and disorder activities. According to the authors these approaches are part of the interventions of hot spot because they include things like razing abandoned buildings and cleaning up graffiti. However, the increase of misdemeanor arrests of offenders contribute to the crime control in hot spot but not as much situational efforts does (Braga and bond 2008). Authors stated that situational crime prevention strategies are essential for addressing crime in hot spots rather than the aggressive order maintenance of arrests in high disorder places. In other words, if police officers only make arrest in hot spot this will not effectively reduce crime because they need to develop a more complex approach to deal with high crime areas ( Braga & Weisburd , 2010).
In general, official statistics of crime recorded by the police and surveys of the public such as victim surveys and self-report studies are the three main measures of the extent of crime in Britain. The oldest method is to rely on official data collected by criminal justice agencies, such as data on arrests or convictions. The other two rely on social surveys. In one case, individuals are asked if they have been victims of crime; in the other, they are asked to self-report their own criminal activity. (Terence P. Thornberry and Marvin D. Krohn) Although these are a main secondary source of quantitative data, each of them may contain some drawbacks. Thus, this essay will introduce these three methods and demonstrates their disadvantages, such as the police crime statistics exclude the unreported and unrecorded crime;
The placement of key resources and manpower where crime is predicted and anticipated to occur is slowly becoming the norm for policing. Statistical data
seeking to link more expansive data elements to the crime, included in six primary categories:
Crime and criminalization are dependent on social inequality Social inequality there are four major forms of inequality, class gender race and age, all of which influence crime. In looking at social classes and relationship to crime, studies have shown that citizens of the lower class are more likely to commit crimes of property and violence than upper-class citizens: who generally commit political and economic crimes. In 2007 the National Crime Victimization Survey showed that families with an income of $15000 or less had a greater chance of being victimized; recalling that lower classes commit a majority of those crimes. We can conclude that crime generally happens within classes.
North Staffordshire Polytechnic Department of Geography Occasional Paper 7. Smith, S. J. (1989) ‘The challenge of urban crime’ Chapter 15 in Herbert D.T. and Smith, D.M. (eds.) In the book of the same name. Social Problems and the City: New Perspectives (2nd Edition) Yarwood, R. (2001) Crime and policing in the British Countryside: some agendas for contemporary geographical research Sociologia Ruralis, 41.2, 201-219 Zhao, J. Schneider, M. and Quint, T. (2002) ‘The effect of police presence on public fear reduction and satisfaction: A review of the literature’.
... 86). Hence why I believe that criminal behaviour is influenced by mixture of a persons social background, life chances and pathology
With a 10% increase in crime rate since 2009, budding city St. John’s (Newfoundland and Labrador) soared 19.2% above the national average and in 2010 placed as seventh in Canada’s overall crime rated cities (Brennan, 2011). The level of crime relative to suburban or rural areas has recently become an accepted theory in criminology. Regardless of the data source used, crime statistics consistently reflect that urban crime rates are substantially greater than crime rates in non-urban areas. More so, population size has been shown to be an important predictor of crime rates across cities, not only in Canada, but all over the world. St. John’s has developed and grown economically over the past few years, thriving off the offshore oil and gas industry who’s profits have injected about $800 million into the local economy boosting the city’s Real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) attributed to the St. John’s Census Metropolitan Area (CMA) by an estimated 5.0% in 2010 to $9.8 billion, that adding to an increase of 5.4% for the province as a whole (City of St. John’s. 2011). A clear multiplier effect in population growth can be observed as St. John’s population increased by 8.9% between the years of 2001 and 2010 during the time in which the gas and oil and nickel industries settled in the area. Now, as one of the most rapidly developing cities in the country, St. John’s is getting a taste of one of the more serious social backfires to urbanization. Urban development in St. John's is increasing crime opportunities and the overall crime rate in the city and province. Supported not only by up to date statistics, this idea is also supported by year long criminal and social behavioral experiments conducted by trained psychologists such as Wolfgang...
Different schools of thought propose varying theoretical models of criminality. It is agreeable that criminal behaviour is deep rooted in societies and screams for attention. Biological, Social ecological and psychological model theories are key to helping researchers gain deeper comprehension of criminal behaviour and ways to avert them before they become a menace to society. All these theories put forward a multitude of factors on the outlooks on crime. All these theories have valid relevancy to continuous research on criminal behaviour.
I now know that criminology prefer to highlight the correlations between crimes’ social climates and criminals’ psychological states of mind. While some argues that criminal behavior is a result of individuals’ association with criminal peers, other claims that crime is a reflection of an individual’s genetic disadvantages. I have come to learn that there are no universally agreed formulas on decoding crimes and criminal behaviors. What we have, however, is a manual full of academic opinions and subjective views that have emerged alongside of the development of criminology. At the same time, the volume of conflicting perspectives that I have stumble upon in studying criminology reminded me again that the success of our current assessment models has yet to be determined. Thus, the study of criminology is an appropriate practice that will further prepare me to conduct meaningful research on legal studies and to provide accurate and in-depth findings in the near