Tracking social life and crime

• An individual’s decision to commit a crime is influenced, among other things, by his/her whereabouts over time and space. In this article, we suggest the use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS), combined with space-time budget techniques, to visualise and track individuals’ daily activities patterns. We first test several GIS-based visualisation techniques for handling spatial and temporal dimensions of activity patterns using a dataset of adolescents in Peterborough, UK. Later, we show how these spatial methods can support the creation of measures of environmental exposure that may help predict group level offending. Findings indicate that visualisation techniques are effective tools for exploratory analysis of how individuals differ in their patterns of activity across the city. Results also show that tracking groups of individuals by using measures of environmental exposure, in combination with individual characteristics and settings, can help explain differences in their levels of offending.

Ämnesord

MEDICIN OCH HÄLSOVETENSKAP  -- Hälsovetenskap -- Folkhälsovetenskap, global hälsa, socialmedicin och epidemiologi (hsv//swe)

MEDICAL AND HEALTH SCIENCES  -- Health Sciences -- Public Health, Global Health, Social Medicine and Epidemiology (hsv//eng)

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Social och ekonomisk geografi -- Kulturgeografi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Social and Economic Geography -- Human Geography (hsv//eng)

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Juridik -- Juridik och samhälle (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Law -- Law and Society (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

individual movement patterns

crime

GIS

PADS

Publikations- och innehållstyp

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