Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rdxmf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T03:23:18.127Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

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
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

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

BYRNE, James M., and Robert J., SAMPSON (1986) The Social Ecology of Crime. New York: Springer-Verlag.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
GLASSNER, Barry (1982) “Labeling Theory,” in Rosenberg, M. Michael, Stebbins, Robert A., and Turowetz, Allan (eds.), The Sociology of Deviance. New York: St. Martin's Press.Google Scholar
HARVEY, David (1973) Social Justice and the City. London: Edward Arnold.Google Scholar
HORTON, Frank E., and David R., REYNOLDS (1971) “Effects of Urban Spatial Structure on Individual Behaviour,” 47 Economic Geography 36.Google Scholar
LANE, Roger (1979) Violent Death in the City: Suicide, Accident and Murder in Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
LYNCH, Kevin (1960) The Image of the City. Cambridge: MIT Press.Google Scholar
SHAW, Clifford R. and McKAY, Henry D. (1942) Juvenile Delinquency and Urban Areas. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar