Crime mapping and the spatial analysis of crime includes a variety of techniques and topics. The most rudimentary form of crime mapping is the use of geographic information systems to visualize spatial patterns and organize geographical data for more traditional statistical analysis, i.e., multivariate regression. Spatial analyses may be used in an exploratory way to help ascertain how certain environmental or ecological factors of a neighborhood may affect the geographic distribution of crime. Of particular interest is an understanding of the spatial patterns of crime and responses to them. Topics related to understanding such patterns include crime displacement and diffusion, the mobility patterns of criminal participants, and the evaluation of the effectiveness of geographically targeted crime reduction strategies.
There is a robust relationship between crime and space. Within the field of criminology, crime mapping remains an innovative domain with new techniques and visualizations, which assist researchers and practitioners in better understanding how the social and physical environments affect criminal behavior. Combining new approaches like spatialized network analysis or risk terrain modeling with more conventional crime mapping and spatial analysis techniques allows for a more holistic strategy that could inform neighborhood public safety and aid in directing the allocation of resources, e.g., specialized law enforcement and directed patrol, in a more efficient manner.
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Crime Mapping and Spatial Analysis
Matthew Valasik
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Epidemiological Criminology
Ali Rowhani-Rahbar and Haylea Hannah
Health and crime are interrelated in numerous ways. Criminal offending can influence health outcomes, while health and well-being can change the likelihood of criminal offending. In addition, tools of the criminal justice system can affect health, while health policy may influence criminal offending. Notably, the tools of the public health and criminal justice system can work synergistically or antagonistically to impact both health and crime outcomes. Epidemiological criminology (EpiCrim) has been viewed as a paradigm linking the methods of public health with those of the criminal justice system and integrating epidemiological theories and practices with their corresponding theories and tools in criminology. The specific contribution of this framework is toward the development of strategies and interventions that address multiple factors underlying health and criminal behavior at different biopsychosocial levels. The overarching premise of this paradigm is that sustained and intentional efforts toward applying the principles of EpiCrim could improve health and well-being and reduce criminal behavior in manners that exceed the contribution of each field separately.
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Gangs and Violence
Haley Bullard and Shannon Reid
Much of the ongoing concern about the presence of gangs and gang members in the community has to do with the association between street gangs and violence. Decades of research on street gangs demonstrates the complexity of the violent perpetration and victimization of gang members. Although the violence attributed to gang members reached its peak in the late 1980s and early 1990s, gang members continue to be disproportionately involved in violence, both as perpetrators and victims. Understanding gang violence requires careful consideration of the overlapping and intersecting relationships between violence and gang identity, victimization, perpetration, gender, and space. Violence plays an important role in the creation and maintenance of gang identity. Research on violence participation by gang members has demonstrated that gang violence can have both symbolic and instrumental purposes, and that this violence helps the gang build a collective identity and makes violence more normative. Despite some continued misconceptions about the role of female gang members and their presence in gangs, women make up a substantial portion of gang members, and any discussion of the relationship between gangs and violence must also consider the impact of gender on violence participation and victimization. Both male and female gang members are impacted by violence, but levels of participation and types of risk can vary by gender. The complex and gendered aspects of gang violence can make the prevention, intervention, and suppression of gang violence difficult tasks for law enforcement and policymakers. There are a range of perspectives on how best to reduce gang violence. Some researchers advocate early prevention programs to keep youth from joining gangs; others focus on ways to pull youth out of gangs at critical moments, such as when they enter emergency services. Other programs and policies are aimed at reducing gang violence that is ongoing in the community. These programs, such as Operation Ceasefire and Project Safe Neighborhoods, have utilized a focused deterrence framework to curb gang violence. All of these programs are aimed at reducing the amount of violence gang members participate in an attempt to minimize the risk of future violent victimization. Research on gang violence continues to grow and includes new avenues of research. The utilization of innovative methodologies, such as social network analysis, and new areas of research, such as examining the impact of social media on gang violence, continue to advance our knowledge of gang violence and its causes, correlates, and impact.
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Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing
Brooke B. Chambers and Joachim J. Savelsberg
Genocide and ethnic cleansing are among the most deadly human-made catastrophes. Together with other forms of government violence, such as war crimes and crimes against humanity, the death toll they caused during the 20th century alone approximates 200 million. This is an estimated ten times higher than the number of deaths resulting from all violence committed in civil society during the same period. Yet the definition of genocide, its perception as a social problem, and the designation of responsible actors as criminals are all relatively recent. Globalization, international organizations, nongovernmental organizations, and cultural shifts are interrelated contributors to this process of redefinition.
While genocide and ethnic cleansing often appear to be unpredictable and chaotic, they nonetheless underlie a socio-logic across time and space. As the field of study evolved, scholars debated the role of authority and ideology in enabling violence. Today, consensus has shifted away from deterministic explanations about intrinsic hatred engrained in particular groups to sociological factors. They include the role of political regimes, war, organization, and narratives of ethnic hatred, each of which can play a role in facilitating violence.
Recent developments also include the creation of new institutional mechanisms that seek to punish perpetrators and prevent the occurrence of genocide and ethnic cleansing. Among them are criminal justice responses that work potentially through deterrence, but also—more fundamentally—through the initiation of cultural change. Prosecutions, as well as supplemental mechanisms such as truth commissions, may indeed lead to a radical shift in the perception of mass violence and those responsible for it, thereby delegitimizing genocidal and ethnic cleansing campaigns.
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The Harms and Crimes of Logging and Deforestation
José Luis Carpio-Domínguez
Among the socioenvironmental problems that have been determinant in the causes of climate change, deforestation represents one of the main ones. The environmental harms caused by deforestation include the extinction of flora and fauna species, the loss of soil fertility, and limits on regional sustainability, affecting efforts to mitigate climate change. The social harms include the reduction of communities’ capacities for development and the loss of ecosystem services such as water and soil fertility for subsistence, and phenomena such as illegal logging, when configured as organized crime, threaten the security of local communities. Despite government efforts to regulate this practice at local, regional, and global levels, it is still present in an illegal or uncontrolled manner in many countries. Deforestation is linked to soft law enforcement, the economic precariousness of the places where deforestation takes place (as a subsistence or illegal activity), and highly profitable illegal markets, therefore requiring a multifactorial response. Improving forest law enforcement and environmental conservation also requires strong political commitment across governments, as well as institutional, social (including native and Indigenous communities), economic, and environmental sector collaboration, promoting horizontal governance at all levels.
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Immigration and Crime
Frances Bernat
In the context of crime, victimization, and immigration in the United States, research shows that people are afraid of immigrants because they think immigrants are a threat to their safety and engage in many violent and property crimes. However, quantitative research has consistently shown that being foreign born is negatively associated with crime overall and is not significantly associated with committing either violent or property crime. If an undocumented immigrant is arrested for a criminal offense, it tends to be for a misdemeanor. Researchers suggest that undocumented immigrants may be less likely to engage in serious criminal offending behavior because they seek to earn money and not to draw attention to themselves. Additionally, immigrants who have access to social services are less likely to engage in crime than those who live in communities where such access is not available. Some emerging research has shown that communities with concentrated immigrant populations have less crime because these communities become revitalized. In regard to victimization, foreign-born victims of crime may not report their victimization because of fears that they will experience negative consequences if they contact the police or seek to avoid legal mechanisms to resolve disputes. Recently, concern about immigration and victimization has turned to refugees who are at risk of harm from traffickers, who warehouse them, threaten them, and abuse them physically with impunity. More research is needed on the relationship among immigration, offending, and victimization. The United States and other nations that focus on border security may be misplacing their efforts during global crises that result in forced migrations. Poverty and war, among other social conditions that would encourage a person to leave their homeland in search of a better life, should be addressed by governments when enforcing immigration laws and policy.
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Online Terrorism and Violent Extremism
Ryan Scrivens and Tiana Gaudette
Since the turn of the 21st century, advances in computer technology have revolutionized how people connect, communicate, and interact at a rapid pace. Increasingly, computer technologies and computer-mediated communications have been used by individuals to connect with one another from around the globe. The Internet’s seamless accessibility and user-friendly interface have revolutionized the sharing of information and communications. Terrorists and violent extremists, among many others, have exploited the Internet and its expanding digital landscape, evolving into transnational networks through modern information and communication technologies. Indeed, the Internet has served as a central hub for terrorist groups to connect, recruit, and mobilize as well as distribute propaganda and plan attacks within and outside domestic borders. It should come as no surprise, then, that online terrorism and violent extremism research has grown rapidly in recent years, and so too have the practitioner and policymaker responses to the threat of radicalization to extremist violence.
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Selling Sex in a Global Context
Aimee Wodda and Meghna Bhat
Commercial sex continues to be an object of debate in the realm of criminological and criminal justice. The regulation of commercial sex in a global context varies due to local law, culture, and custom. Global criminolegal responses to selling sex include criminalization, decriminalization, abolition, neo-abolition, and legalization. In recent decades, global public policymakers have become increasingly concerned with the public health aspects associated with negative outcomes related to the criminalization of the purchase, facilitation, and/or sale of sex. These concerns include violence against those who sell sex, stigma when attempting to access healthcare and social services, increased risk of sexually transmitted infections or diseases (STIs or STDs) including HIV/AIDS, and economic vulnerability that leaves many who sell sex unable to negotiate the use of condoms and at risk of police arrest for carrying condoms. Those most at risk of harm tend to be young people, LGBTQ populations, and people who are racial or ethnic minorities within their communities—these are often intersecting identities. Organizations such as Amnesty International, the Global Commission on HIV and the Law, Human Rights Watch, UN AIDS, and the World Health Organization recommend decriminalization of commercial sex in order to reduce stigma and increase positive health outcomes. Scholars have also examined the challenges faced by migrant sex workers and the problematic effects of being labeled a victim of trafficking. Contemporary strategies geared toward reducing harm for those who sell sex tend to focus on rights issues and how they affect the well-being of those who sell sex.
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Social Engineering
Kevin F. Steinmetz and Cassandra Cross
This entry reviews the concept of social engineering, the use of deception to circumvent information security measures. While the term social engineering traces its roots back to attempts in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to manipulate social groups, the contemporary use of the term is rooted in the mid-20th century and its use among telephone enthusiasts or “phone phreaks.” Despite its associations with contemporary information and computer security, social engineering is fundamentally a social process that parallels the kinds of deceptive strategies and relational practices found in other forms of fraud and deception. As such, it involves the exploitation of human psychology and the rules governing social interactions. Social engineering may have significant impacts on victims beyond financial damages including emotional, psychological, relational, lifestyle, and employment harms. Relying on law enforcement to prevent these crimes is fraught with challenges. To prevent social engineering attacks, organizations may consider adopting a variety of policies and practices including providing education for organizational members on proper security practices, creating clear and strong policies to guide member decision making, ensure onboarding procedures for new employees involve security awareness training and related protocols, creating an organizational culture that values security, employing technologically based fraud prevention measures, and regularly engaging in social engineering penetration testing.
