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Independent analysis of police, fire, and ambulance calls for service demonstrates common patterns in emergency service activity. Targeted, place-focused interventions have been demonstrated to prevent future problems for emergency services. This research builds on these findings to examine the spatial and temporal intersection of police, fire, and ambulance incidents to explore the potential utility of enhanced collaboration between emergency-first responders. Using police and fire data from Surrey, BC, Canada, from 2011 to 2013, spatial and temporal patterns of police-, fire-, and ambulance-related incidents were examined. Initial analyses demonstrate that 36% of the City's area experienced 72% of incidents responded to over this 3-year study period. Focusing on this high-volume area, the spatial and temporal intersection of these incident types was explored. Spatially, lattices of varying cell sizes (250 m, 500 m, and 1,000 m) were placed over the study area. Temporally, incident volume was examined across the entire 3-year study period, and at yearly and monthly intervals. Incidents were placed within these spatial and temporal frameworks and visual inspection was utilized to assess the convergence of service demand. Regardless of the cell grid size, police, fire, and ambulance incidents were spatially and temporally concentrated, with the top 10% of cells accounting for approximately 50% of all incidents across all services. Furthermore, there was considerable spatio-temporal convergence in cells which account for the top decile of call volume for all incident types. A 2 × 2 typology is proposed to classify locations (in this case grid cells) based on (1) the frequency at which they generate high demand for services (sporadic versus persistent), and (2) the combination of agencies required to respond to high demand problems (single versus convergent). The spatial and temporal convergence of emergency service problems observed in this study suggests that an interagency approach to problem identification will enhance problem analysis processes. Working in conjunction with established problem-focused intervention strategies (such as problem-oriented policing), the volume-service typology provides a framework that can contribute to the development of appropriate problem-responses. This, we hope, will support emerging efforts to increase the extent to which emergency-first responder agencies collaborate to maximize efficiency and effectiveness, and reduce harm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: This study explores preference variation in location choice strategies of residential burglars. Applying a model of offender target selection that is grounded in assertions of the routine activity approach, rational choice perspective, crime pattern and social disorganization theories, it seeks to address the as yet untested assumption that crime location choice preferences are the same for all offenders. Methods: Analyzing detected residential burglaries from Brisbane, Australia, we apply a random effects variant of the discrete spatial choice model to estimate preference variation between offenders across six location choice characteristics. Furthermore, in attempting to understand the causes of this variation we estimate how offenders' spatial target preferences might be affected by where they live and by their age. Results: Findings of this analysis demonstrate that while in the aggregate the characteristics of location choice are consistent with the findings from previous studies, considerable preference variation is found between offenders. Conclusions: This research highlights that current understanding of choice outcomes is relatively poor and that existing applications of the discrete spatial choice approach may underestimate preference variation between offenders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines how super controllers, actors responsible for creating incentives for controllers (handlers, place managers and guardians), prevent maritime piracy. Using a segmented regression model, we estimate the impact of three major anti-pirate initiatives (increased place management, increased handling and increased guardianship) using nine years of pirate activity data. Increased place management at sea reduced piracy but created tactical displacement, spreading piracy across the Indian Ocean. Establishing and constructing pirate courts and prisons, a form of offender handling, had no ostensible impact on pirate activity. Increased guardianship, in the form of detailed situational crime prevention guidance, triggered a swift and widespread reduction in pirate attacks. The introduction of super controllers and the actions they instigated dramatically altered the context of maritime piracy, making it easier to prevent pirate attacks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a study aimed at addressing the lack of systematic replication studies in offender mobility and explores the generalizability of an offender target selection model in the Great Britain, the Netherlands and Australia. The study is based on a research conducted by Wim Bernasco and Paul Nieuwbeerta (B&N), "How Do Residential Burglars Select Target Areas? A New Approach to the Analysis of Criminal Location Choice," which appeared in the "British Journal of Criminilogy" in 2005.

The article presents the study on the common patterns of interpersonal victimization. It discusses how the study was conducted which involved controlled simulation experiments to assess three regularities of crime by various statistical techniques including repeat victimization and spatial clustering. The results reportedly supports beliefs of environmental criminology on why interpersonal victimization is usually spatially concentrated.

This study demonstrates that computational modeling and, in particular, agent-based modeling (ABM) offers a viable compatriot to traditional experimental methodologies for criminology scholars. ABM can be used as a means to operationalize and test hypothetical mechanisms that offer a potential explanation for commonly observed criminological phenomena. This study tests whether the hypothesized mechanisms of environmental criminology are sufficient to produce several commonly observed characteristics of crime. We present an ABM of residential burglary, simulating a world inhabited by potential targets and offenders who behave according to the theoretical propositions of environmental criminology. A series of simulated experiments examining the impact of these mechanisms on patterns of offending are performed. The outputs of these simulations then are compared with several well-established findings derived from empirical studies of residential burglary, including the spatial concentration of crime, repeat victimization, and the journey to crime curve. The results from this research demonstrate that the propositions of the routine activity approach, rational choice perspective, and crime pattern theory provide a viable generative explanation for several independent characteristics of crime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Crime analysts have traditionally received little guidance from academic researchers in key tasks in th analysis process, specifically the testing of multiple hypotheses and evaluating evidence in a scientific fashion. This article attempts to fiH this gap by outlining a method (the Analysis of Competing Hypotheses) of systematically analysing multiple explanations for crime problems. The method is systematic, avoids many cognitive error common in analysis, and is explicit. It is argued that the implementation of this approach makes analytic products audit-able, the reasoning underpinning them transparent, and provides intelligence managers a rational professional development tool for individual analysts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The results of this study reveal a major methodological problem with an established body of criminological literature—the journey to crime. The dominant finding of such research is that most crimes occur close to an offender's home. Consequently, journeys to crime typically display a distance-decay function that is assumed to exist between and within offenders. However, most journey-to-crime studies use nested data—individual offenders contributing multiple crime trips—yet employ analytic methods that fail to account for this property, leading to inference and aggregation concerns. In the study outlined in this article, we demonstrated the implications of using nested data for analyzing the journey to crime. We showed that once controlling for nesting, only a few (prolific) offenders display a distance decay pattern. Implications of the findings for theory and future research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Crime analysts attempt to identify regularities in police recorded crime data with a central view of disrupting the patterns found. One common method for doing so is hotspot mapping, focusing attention on spatial clustering as a route to crime reduction (Chainey & Ratcliffe, 2005; Clarke & Eck, 2003). Despite the widespread use of this analytical technique, evaluation tools to assess its ability to accurately predict spatial patterns have only recently become available to practitioners (Chainey, Tompson, & Uhlig, 2008). Crucially, none has examined this issue from a spatio-temporal standpoint. Given that the organisational nature of policing agencies is shift based, it is common-sensical to understand crime problems at this temporal sensitivity, so there is an opportunity for resources to be deployed swiftly in a manner that optimises prevention and detection. This paper tests whether hotspot forecasts can be enhanced when time-of-day information is incorporated into the analysis. Using street crime data, and employing an evaluative tool called the Predictive Accuracy Index (PAI), we found that the predictive accuracy can be enhanced for particular temporal shifts, and this is primarily influenced by the degree of spatial clustering present. Interestingly, when hotspots shrank (in comparison with the all-day hotspots), they became more concentrated, and subsequently more predictable. This is meaningful in practice; for if crime is more predictable during specific timeframes, then response resources can be used intelligently to reduce victimisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite criminology's widespread application of geography, the full implications of Cliff and Ord's article have yet to be realized. In this essay the major types of spatial studies in criminology are outlined, followed by a depiction of the context of criminological research at the time the article was published. Next the major changes to the field occurring after the publication of Cliff and Ord's paper, focusing on technology advances and theory, are set out. Fortunately these changes mean the discipline is well placed to move beyond seeing the presence of spatial autocorrelation as a methodological issue that needs to be explained away. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Law and Order: An Honest Citizen's Guide to Crime and Control, Robert Reiner (2007) Cambridge, Polity, 168 pages, ISBNs: 978-0-7456-2997-1, 978-0-7456-2996-4 Policing the Rural Crisis, Russell Hogg and Kerry Carrington (2006) Leichhardt, The Federation Press, 246 pp, ISBN 9781862875814 Imagining the Victim of Crime, S. Walklate (2007) Maidenhead: Open University Press/ McGraw-Hill Education, pp.189, ISBN -10: 0335 21727 3 Outsmarting the Terrorists, Ronald V. Clarke and Graeme R. Newman 2006. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 316pp., ISBN 0-275-99230-6 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The September 2005 review of policing structure in England and Wales by Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC) is considered in terms of its impact on forces' ability to detect volume crime (crime types that occur in relatively large numbers). We demonstrate that there is no relationship between force size and detection rates, however there is a difference with respect to the means of detecting volume crime. Smaller forces tend to record a greater proportion of their volume crime detections through forensic means. We explore one possibility of this observation — greater forensic deployment due to lower demand or better management — and find some evidence to support better management of forensic resources in smaller forces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how data mining techniques can assist the monitoring of Crime Scene Investigator performance. The findings show that Investigators can be placed in one of four groups according to their ability to recover DNA and fingerprints from crime scenes. They also show that their ability to predict which crime scenes will yield the best opportunity of recovering forensic samples has no correlation to their actual ability to recover those samples. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper explores one aspect of spatial dependence for the offence of burglary, utilising epidemiological methods for the study of infectious diseases to investigate the phenomenon of near repeat victimization. The near repeat burglary hypothesis states that proximity to a burgled dwelling increases burglary risk for those areas that have a high degree of housing homogeneity and that this risk is similar in nature to the temporarily heightened fish of becoming a repeat victim after an initial victimization. The near repeat hypothesis was tested on 34 months of police recorded burglary data across a high crime area of Brisbane, Australia. Near repeats were shown to exist in the study area, mainly in suburbs containing homogeneous housing. Little or no housing diversity, in terms of the type of physical construction and general appearance of dwellings, serves to restrict the extent of repeat victimization. Housing diversity allows offenders a choice of targets, and favoured targets will be 'revisited' by burglars. Near identical targets usually present no motive for an offender to favour one property over another. Thus in areas with low housing diversity, victim prevalence should be higher than in areas with heterogeneous housing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While there is a considerable body of evidence on the influence of individual and situational, and to a lesser extent community factors, on police use of force, little is known about the influence of police agency factors on use of force by police. Greater use of community policing approaches has recently been recommended for U.S. policing agencies, in the wake of a series of high-profile police-involved deaths of predominantly African American citizens. However, there is limited empirical evidence that community policing can influence or impact the use of force by police. The current study uses an online survey of Australian police officers to examine whether frequency of community engagement affects officers' attitudes towards coercive and non-coercive policing responses to a vignette, and whether social distance might explain this relationship. Regression analyses demonstrated that community engagement was positively related to endorsement of non-coercive policing responses and negatively related to endorsement of coercive policing responses. Social distance mediated the former relationship, but not the latter. These results suggest that community policing approaches may increase the propensity for non-coercive policing responses, and that a reduction in social distance to the community is one pathway through which this occurs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Extant research on police use of force has established that force is not distributed evenly across communities, with minority threat, ecological contamination, and social disorganisation some of the most common theories used to understand the distribution of police use of force in the US. The current study aimed to test the relevance of these theories for explaining the distribution of serious police use of force events in Australia. We tested a use of force frequency model using negative binomial regression, and a use of force severity model using ordered logistic multilevel modelling. Results demonstrated support for ecological contamination theory, social disorganisation and partial support for socio-economic disadvantage in predicting the frequency of serious police use of force events across communities, while minority threat theory was not supported. In contrast, results suggested that individual and situational factors are more influential in predicting force severity than community characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study identifies subtypes of citizen behavioral characteristics within police use of force events and assesses ecological influences on these subtypes. Data comprised police use of force reports, recorded crime data, and census data. Latent class analysis was applied to 19,900 police use of force events to identify latent classes of citizen behavioral characteristics. A five class-solution demonstrated best fit and comprised the following classes: violent, unstable, and drug or alcohol affected; apparent mental disorder and possessing a weapon; alcohol-related violence; suspicious and fleeing; and violent behavior and threatening a weapon. Chi-square analysis and multilevel logistic regression showed each citizen presentation class was associated with distinct patterns of offence types and contexts for police use of force. Ecological influences were notable for three classes of citizen presentations. The clustering of citizen behaviors within incidents provides insights into the nature and distribution of types of police–citizen encounters where force is used. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evolution equips sexually reproducing species with mate choice mechanisms that function to evaluate the reproductive consequences of mating with different individuals. Indeed, evolutionary psychologists have shown that women's mate choice mechanisms track many cues of men's genetic quality and ability to invest resources in the woman and her offspring. One variable that predicted both a man's genetic quality and his ability to invest is the man's formidability (i.e. fighting ability or resource holding power/potential). Modern women, therefore, should have mate choice mechanisms that respond to ancestral cues of a man's fighting ability. One crucial component of a man's ability to fight is his upper body strength. Here, we test how important physical strength is to men's bodily attractiveness. Three sets of photographs of men's bodieswere shownto raterswho estimated either their physical strength or their attractiveness. Estimates of physical strength determined over 70% of men's bodily attractiveness. Additional analyses showed that tallness and leanness were also favoured, and, along with estimates of physical strength, accounted for 80% of men's bodily attractiveness. Contrary to popular theories of men's physical attractiveness, there was no evidence of a nonlinear effect; the strongest men were the most attractive in all samples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction and Aims: The lockout intervention has become embedded in Australian alcohol policy with little scientific evidence of its effectiveness in reducing violence and disorder. This paper reports an evaluation of the Queensland lockout pilot in Surfers Paradise. Patrons could not enter or re-enter licensed venues after 3 am, while patrons inside at this time could stay until close.Design and Methods: Using police and ambulance data, time series analyses examined the impact of tourism seasons and the lockout on rates of crime, violence, injury and intoxication. Additional analyses were also conducted to show spatial and temporal changes in crime over time.Results: Both police and ambulance data showed that the lockout introduction had no statistically significant impact on rates of crime, violence, head and neck injuries, and intoxication over the 2 years following lockout. Hot spot maps indicated limited spatial shift of crime within Surfers Paradise following the lockout introduction, with evidence of a temporary intensification of crime in already established hot spots. We found a moderate statistically significant change in the 24 h distribution of crime after the lockout implementation, suggesting temporal displacement of crime.Discussion: Results support the small existing body of evidence on lockouts that indicates they are largely ineffective in reducing crime and injuries in entertainment districts.Conclusion: As multi-pronged strategies that include a lockout gain in popularity, further investigation should focus on identifying the key drivers of successful interventions such as the Newcastle strategy, to better refine these interventions for replication and evaluation elsewhere. [De Andrade D, Homel R, Townsley M. Trouble in paradise: The crime and health outcomes of the Surfers Paradise licensed venue lockout. Drug Alcohol Rev 2016;35:564-572]. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the advent of the Internet and the emergence of cybercrimes (e.g., cyber stalking, cyber harassment), criminologists have begun to explore the empirical utility of lifestyle exposure and routine activity theories (RATs) to account for personal victimization as a consequence of cyber abuse. Available cyber abuse studies have produced inconsistent empirical support for both models, which has reignited the debate about whether terrestrial theories, such as RAT, will ever be able to adequately explain cybercrimes due to the spatial and temporal disconnect between the theories and the cyber environment. This article reviews existing cyber abuse scholarship, explores potential reasons for the weak empirical support for routine activity and lifestyle exposure theories in cyberspace, and proposes several directions for future research. We suggest that to further our understanding of cyber abuse processes, scholars need to carefully define and operationalize the key theoretical concepts in the light of latest developments in RAT (i.e., addition of new controllers—handlers and place managers, and super controllers), and conduct in-depth qualitative studies, as well as quantitative studies, that employ robust methodological designs and multi-level statistical analyses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the growing problem of clandestine drug laboratories, there is currently little evidence of systematic knowledge regarding the crime-commission process involved in this criminal enterprise. In addition, as mentioned by Levi and Maguire, strategic measures utilized in law enforcement interventions that extend beyond immediate operational goals towards a lasting reduction in organized forms of crime are also lacking. The purpose of this study is to better understand the crime-commission process of clandestine drug laboratories and identify significant points for intervention by using crime scripts. This objective is achieved through a qualitative content analysis of 25 court cases in which a crime script comprising seven stages is identified. Potential prevention measures are also underpinned and summarized according to the problem analysis triangle. It is concluded that a focus on location, chemicals and equipment might have the most detrimental effect on the overall manufacturing script process. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper ascertains the feasibility of using a data mining supervised learning algorithm to predict which crime scenes potentially offer the best opportunity of recovering forensic samples such as finger prints or DNA. UK police forces have a finite number of Crime Scene Investigators and an ever-increasing demand to attend crime scenes. Most forces have a documented attendance criterion but crimes are not evenly distributed throughout the working day. This, at times, results in more scenes to examine than there are investigators, thereby posing the question, Which scenes should be attended first in order to retrieve forensics?. The Insightful Miner data mining workbench tool has been used to retrieve, combine, clean, manipulate and model the data. The results from Northamptonshire Police have demonstrated that the modelling process is able to predict crime scene attendance to an accuracy of 68 per cent which is significantly better than human experts. The methodology was used in a second police force (Gwent) which records data into different computer systems and the results were comparable to those achieved in Northamptonshire Police. This demonstrates that the methodology is portable between forces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The analysis of geographically referenced data, specifically point data, is predicated on the accurate geocoding of those data. Geocoding refers to the process in which geographically referenced data (addresses, for example) are placed on a map. This process may lead to issues with positional accuracy or the inability to geocode an address. In this paper, we conduct an international investigation into the impact of the (in)ability to geocode an address on the resulting spatial pattern. We use a variety of point data sets of crime events (varying numbers of events and types of crime), a variety of areal units of analysis (varying the number and size of areal units), from a variety of countries (varying underlying administrative systems), and a locally-based spatial point pattern test to find the levels of geocoding match rates to maintain the spatial patterns of the original data when addresses are missing at random. We find that the level of geocoding success depends on the number of points and the number of areal units under analysis, but generally show that the necessary levels of geocoding success are lower than found in previous research. This finding is consistent across different national contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The emergence of new technology-facilitated types of crime following the advent of the Internet necessitated the re-examination of the utility of traditional theories such as lifestyle-routine activity theory to explain crimes that occur in the new and unique environment of cyberspace. The objective of this study was to investigate whether victims' lifestyles and routine activities can help explain the risk of victimization from direct, indirect and mixed types of cyber abuse. To achieve this objective, the data from a large nationwide (US) crowd-sourced sample (N = 1463) of adult members of an online labour portal Mechanical Turk was collected using an online survey platform Qualtrics and then analyzed using Bayesian Profile Regression to identify clusters of lifestyles and routine activities of victims associated with victimization from different types of cyber abuse. Our analyses were able to distinguish between victims and non-victims as well as between victims of different sub-classifications of cyber abuse. Specifically, we have identified five population subgroups based on their lifestyles and routine activities in terms of the associated risk of personal victimization from different types of cyber abuse. This paper discusses the differences in lifestyles and routine activities between the identified groups. Our findings generally support the empirical utility of lifestyle-routine activity theory to explain cyber abuse victimization; as with other traditional types of crime (e.g. robbery or assault), victims' lifestyles and routine activities play a significant role in their risk of various types of cyber abuse victimization. • Lifestyle-routine activity theory appears useful for understanding different types of cyber abuse victimization. • Non-victims tend to be less involved in risky activities. • Proximity to offenders measured as online gaming is most consistently associated with cyber abuse. • Direct abuse is associated with less involvement in risky activities compared with indirect cyber abuse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using epidemiological techniques for testing disease contagion, it has recently been found that in the wake of a residential burglary, the risk to nearby homes is temporarily elevated. This paper demonstrates the ubiquity of this phenomenon by analyzing space–time patterns of burglary in 10 areas, located in five different countries. While the precise patterns vary, for all areas, houses within 200 m of a burgled home were at an elevated risk of burglary for a period of at least two weeks. For three of the five countries, differences in these patterns may partly be explained by simple differences in target density. The findings inform theories of crime concentration and offender targeting strategies, and have implications for crime forecasting and crime reduction more generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]