- The Oxford Handbooks in Criminology and Criminal Justice
- The Oxford Handbook of Environmental Criminology
- Dedication
- Foreword
- Acknowledgments
- List of Contributors
- Environmental Criminology: Scope, History, and State of the Art
- Social Spatial Influences
- How Do We Get to Causal Clarity on Physical Environment-Crime Dynamics?
- The Individual Perspective
- Do We Really Need Collective Social Process to Understand Why Crime Occurs and Offenders Commit Crime?
- The Importance of High Offender Neighborhoods within Environmental Criminology
- Four Images of the Delinquency Area
- Evaluating Theories of Environmental Criminology: Strengths and Weaknesses
- Deciding on the “Appropriate” Unit of Analysis: Practical Considerations in Environmental Criminology
- GIS and Spatial Analysis
- The Role of Innovative Data Collection Methods in Advancing Criminological Understanding
- Advances in Visualization for Theory Testing in Environmental Criminology
- Victimization Surveys in Environmental Criminology
- Systematic Social Observation
- Computer Simulations: Agent-Focused Environmental Criminology
- Research on Neighborhoods in European Cities
- Testing Theories of Social Disorganization in Nigeria
- Gated Communities and Crime in the United States
- Egohoods: Capturing Change in Spatial Crime Patterns
- Signal Crimes, Social Reactions, and the Future of Environmental Criminology
- Built Environment, Land Use, and Crime
- Macro-Level Generators of Crime, Including Parks, Stadiums, and Transit Stations
- Does Crime Impact Real Estate Prices?: An Assessment of Accessibility and Location
- Street Networks and Crime
- Crime Concentrations at Places
- Studying Situational Effects of Setting Characteristics: Research Examples from the Study of Peers, Activities, and Neighborhoods
- Place Management
- Crime Concentrations: Hot Dots, Hotspots, and Hot Flushes
- Time and Opportunity
- Guardianship
- Mobility and Location Choice of Offenders
- What Have We Learned from Environmental Criminology for the Prevention of Crime?
- Riots, Space, and Place
- Geoprofiling Terrorism
- Child Sexual Abuse and Opportunity
- Gangs and Space
- Organized Crime and Places
- Cybercrime and Place: Applying Environmental Criminology to Crimes in Cyberspace
- Maritime Piracy
- Index
Abstract and Keywords
This chapter sorts out some of the ideas that are sometimes mixed together under the rubric of “social disorganization.” It argues that (1) social disorganization is really not an independent variable or a theory; (2) rather, it is a composite image of the “delinquency area”—the part of town that also has very high crime rates; and (3) this composite image can be disentangled and then clarified, allowing students to learn it and researchers to sharpen their findings. The chapter extracts four distinct images of the delinquency area in the effort to clarify the topic, help people learn it, and assist researchers.
Keywords: social organization, environmental criminology, delinquency area, high crime rate, high-crime neighborhood
Marcus Felson is Professor at Texas State University and recipient of the Honoris Causa from the Universidad Miguel Hernandez in Spain. He originated the routine activity approach to crime rate analysis and is author of Crime and Nature and coauthor of Crime and Everyday Life and Opportunity Makes the Thief. He has extended the routine activity theory to many topics, including white-collar crime, corruption, organized crime, and juvenile gangs.
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- The Oxford Handbooks in Criminology and Criminal Justice
- The Oxford Handbook of Environmental Criminology
- Dedication
- Foreword
- Acknowledgments
- List of Contributors
- Environmental Criminology: Scope, History, and State of the Art
- Social Spatial Influences
- How Do We Get to Causal Clarity on Physical Environment-Crime Dynamics?
- The Individual Perspective
- Do We Really Need Collective Social Process to Understand Why Crime Occurs and Offenders Commit Crime?
- The Importance of High Offender Neighborhoods within Environmental Criminology
- Four Images of the Delinquency Area
- Evaluating Theories of Environmental Criminology: Strengths and Weaknesses
- Deciding on the “Appropriate” Unit of Analysis: Practical Considerations in Environmental Criminology
- GIS and Spatial Analysis
- The Role of Innovative Data Collection Methods in Advancing Criminological Understanding
- Advances in Visualization for Theory Testing in Environmental Criminology
- Victimization Surveys in Environmental Criminology
- Systematic Social Observation
- Computer Simulations: Agent-Focused Environmental Criminology
- Research on Neighborhoods in European Cities
- Testing Theories of Social Disorganization in Nigeria
- Gated Communities and Crime in the United States
- Egohoods: Capturing Change in Spatial Crime Patterns
- Signal Crimes, Social Reactions, and the Future of Environmental Criminology
- Built Environment, Land Use, and Crime
- Macro-Level Generators of Crime, Including Parks, Stadiums, and Transit Stations
- Does Crime Impact Real Estate Prices?: An Assessment of Accessibility and Location
- Street Networks and Crime
- Crime Concentrations at Places
- Studying Situational Effects of Setting Characteristics: Research Examples from the Study of Peers, Activities, and Neighborhoods
- Place Management
- Crime Concentrations: Hot Dots, Hotspots, and Hot Flushes
- Time and Opportunity
- Guardianship
- Mobility and Location Choice of Offenders
- What Have We Learned from Environmental Criminology for the Prevention of Crime?
- Riots, Space, and Place
- Geoprofiling Terrorism
- Child Sexual Abuse and Opportunity
- Gangs and Space
- Organized Crime and Places
- Cybercrime and Place: Applying Environmental Criminology to Crimes in Cyberspace
- Maritime Piracy
- Index
