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Toward an Environmental View of Inner-City Crime

Review products

Smith Susan. Crime, Space and Society. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986). xii + 228 pp. Maps, bibliography, index.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

John C. Schneider
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Modern studies of the spatial patterns of crime have drawn much of their inspiration from the empirical tradition established by Shaw and McKay (1942). Theoretical principally in their kinship with the economic/ecological focus of the “Chicago School” of sociology, the Shaw-McKay studies carefully plotted crime locations and residences of criminals in relation to a model of urban functional land use. Their findings, and those of other investigators writing in the same tradition, show strong and lasting correlations among crime locations, offenders' residences, inner-city areas, nonwhite populations, and urban poverty. With its emphasis on simply locating criminals and their activity in urban space, this approach encourages a pathological view of the problem. Crime is observable wrong behavior and its spatial patterning an indictment of the inner city.

Type
Review Article
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 22 , Issue 5 , 1988 , pp. 1023 - 1026
Copyright
Copyright © 1988 The Law and Society Association.

References

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