The Spatial Ecology Theory

Term Paper # 111157

Investigates the spatial ecology theory, the most useful theory with which to examine the modern day occurrences of crime in the urban environment.

3,510 words () | 37 sources | APA | 2005 Canada

Paper Summary:

This paper explains that the spatial ecology theory asserts that criminal events are not randomly distributed. At every level of societal aggregation, some geographic areas record more or less crimes than others and that these crimes will have unique characteristics and features of particular to their specific location. The author relates the history, tradition and studies relating this theory to urban crime. The paper points out that the traditional spatial ecology theory emphasizes how changing ecological structures influence both stability and change in crime patterns over time and space; however, more contemporary spatial ecology theories account for temporal changes in the spatial patterning of crime and involve a wider range of concerns and quite different methodological and conceptual positions.

Table of Content:
Impact of the Chicago School on Contemporary Spatial Ecology Studies of Urban Crime
Contemporary Spatial Ecology Theories

From the Paper:

"The cartographic school and other subsequent studies located high crime rates in mostly slum environments, but subsequent studies show that high amounts of crimes cluster in geographic spaces and locations that are hardly slum, such as the central business districts and affluent areas and neighborhoods of cities. The work of the cartographers and statisticians appears to have received scant attention in the second half of the nineteenth century because of the emergence of the positive school whose ideas shifted emphasis on criminality from rationality and the environment to individual pathologies."

Sample of Sources Used:

Boggs, S.L. (1970). Urban Crime Patterns. In Crime in the City (Ed.) Glaser, D. New York: Harper and Row.
Bottoms & Xanthos. (1991). Explanations of Crime and Place. London: Routledge.
Brantingham, P.L. & Braintingham, P.J. (1991). Notes on the geometry of crime. In Brantinham and Brantinham (Eds.) Environmental Criminology. Prospect Height, Illinois, Waveland Press, Inc. 27-54.
--------------------- (1984). Patterns in Crime. New York: MacMillian.
----------------------(1991). Crime, Space and Criminological Theory. Prospect Height, Illinois, Waveladn Press, Inc.