Daily Rhythms 2: travel purpose, activity spaces and the spatio-temporal patterning of crime

Lee, WD, Haleem, MS and Bannister, J (2018) Daily Rhythms 2: travel purpose, activity spaces and the spatio-temporal patterning of crime. In: 17th Annual Conference of the European Society of Criminology, 13 September 2017 - 16 September 2017, Cardiff, UK. (Unpublished)

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Abstract

Interpreting the spatio-temporal patterning of crime, it is vital to consider the interplay of travel purpose and the attributes of activity spaces. This task, building on the insights of routine activities theory (Cohen and Felson, 1979), demands the integration of transport, crime and environmental data. In this vein, recent research (Felson and Boivin, 2015; Boivin and Felson 2017) has sought to explore the association between the characteristics of ambient (visitor) populations and crime. It has done so, however, without being able to account for the temporal patterning of crime hotspots nor the specific influence of environmental characteristics on those hotspots. This paper seeks to address this shortfall. It uses a negative binomial model to evaluate the effects of ambient population on crime across a series of time periods. Then, following Mburu and Helbich (2016), it examines the spatial influence of environmental characteristics on crime hotspots through the deployment of eigenvector spatial filtering techniques. The paper demonstrates that the interplay between ambient populations and environmental characteristics is time-dependent and varies according to whether property or violent crime is considered. The results of this research speak to the potential to develop more robust, though particular, explanations of crime.