Section 2.1 Exploring the relationship between alcohol outlets and crime
The main example we will work through most of the chapter considers the assumption that licenced premises which serve alcohol are associated with increased crimes. We might have some hypotheses about why this may be.
One theory might be that some of these serve as crime attractors.
Crime attractors are particular places, areas, neighbourhoods, districts which create well-known criminal opportunities to which strongly motivated, intending criminal offenders are attracted because of the known opportunities for particular types of crime. Examples might include bar districts; prostitution areas; drug markets; large shopping malls, particularly those near major public transit exchanges; large, insecure parking lots in business or commercial areas. The intending offender goes to rough bars looking for fights or other kinds of ’action’ [112], p.7.
On the other hand, it is possible that these areas are crime generators.
Crime generators are particular areas to which large numbers of people are attracted for reasons unrelated to any particular level of criminal motivation they might have or to any particular crime they might end up committing. Typical examples might include shopping precincts; entertainment districts; office concentrations; or sports stadiums [112], p.8.
It is possible that some licensed premises attract crimes, due to their reputation. However, it is also possible that some of them are simply located in areas that are busy, attract lots of people for lots of reasons, and crimes occur as a result of an abundance of opportunities instead.
Whatever the mechanism, the first step to identifying crime places is to examine whether certain outlets have more crimes near them than others. We can do this using open data, some R code, and the spatial operations discussed above. We will return to data from Manchester, UK for this example; however, as we will be using Open Street Map, you can easily replicate this for any other location where you have point-level crime data.
