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Why Some Places Are Bad

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Place Management and Crime

Part of the book series: SpringerBriefs in Criminology ((SCP))

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Abstract

This chapter examines ten explanations for the universal concentration of crime at extremely small places: addresses and property parcels. We organize these explanations using the crime triangle: a graphic depiction of routine activity theory. Although each explanation has merit, and may explain singular occurrences of crime concentration, none of these explanations are complete. And there are too many of them. This sets the stage for our next chapter where we provide a general explanation for crime concentration at places. Our appendix to this chapter gives three explanations for crime concentration at street segments.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Criminal Justice, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH, USA

    John E. Eck

  2. School of Criminology, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada

    Shannon J. Linning

  3. Department of Criminal Justice, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Las Vegas, NV, USA

    Tamara D. Herold

Authors
  1. John E. Eck
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  2. Shannon J. Linning
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  3. Tamara D. Herold
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Appendix: Three Explanations for Proximal Place Crime Concentration

Appendix: Three Explanations for Proximal Place Crime Concentration

What causes extreme crime levels in a few street segments rather than most? Although proximal places are not the direct concern of our book, it is worth a short digression to summarize explanations for these types of places.

Three possibilities stand out. Weisburd et al. (2013) suggest that the social disorganization thesis has been misapplied to neighborhoods: social interaction cannot occur across such large areas. Instead, social control is highly local and operates at the street segment. Their data from Seattle showed that indicators of social organization vary at the segment level, and these are correlated with crime and disorder.

A second possibility comes from Wilcox and Eck (2011). They suggest that traffic—pedestrian and vehicular—on a street segment drives crime. High trafficked segments have more businesses and more targets and draw in more offending. This idea is compatible with Weisburd, Groff, and Yang’s thesis. Perhaps traffic suppresses informal social control, maybe by introducing more strangers (Tillyer & Walter, 2019).

Lee and Eck (2019) provide a third alternative. High-crime segments contain a few high-crime proprietary places on their blocks. That is, proximal place crime problems are due to proprietary place problems. Lee and Eck (2019) found that of all the high-crime street segments in Cincinnati, most had a few high-crime proprietary places (also see Lee, 2017). However, they also show that 10 percent of the high-crime street segments were crime prone their entire length. Therefore, proximal place crime problems may be due to a mix of causes—bad proprietary places, traffic volume, and inadequate social control.

Although not in the cross hairs of this book, proximal places are of interest. First, proximal places are a mix of proprietary places and streets. If proprietary place managers have influences beyond the domains of their property, it will be proximal places they influence (see Chaps. 6, 7, and 8). Second, traffic and social interactions on proximal places may enhance or mitigate place management controls on the segment. And third, proximal places are a far more plausible venue for social control than neighborhoods.

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Eck, J.E., Linning, S.J., Herold, T.D. (2023). Why Some Places Are Bad. In: Place Management and Crime. SpringerBriefs in Criminology(). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-27693-4_2

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