ABSTRACT
‘Crime places’ have only recently emerged as an important focus of crime prevention theory and practice (Eck and Weisburd1995; Sherman1995; Taylor1997; Weisburd2002). ‘Places’ in this context are specific locations within the larger geographic units of communities and neighbourhoods. Sometimes they are defined as buildings or addresses (e.g. see Sherman et al.1989; Green1996), sometimes as block faces (Taylor1997) and sometimes as clusters of addresses or street segments (e.g. see Block et al.1995; Sherman and Weisburd1995; Weisburd and Green1995; Taylor1997). Practitioners, especially the police, have adopted place-based crime prevention approaches with enthusiasm (Weisburd et al.2001; Weisburd and Lum2001; Weisburd2002). Place-based policing (often called ‘hotspots policing’), for example, has become an important locus for police innovation. In a1999 Police Foundation study,80% of American police agencies with100 or more sworn officers reported using crime mapping to identify crime hotspots (Weisburd et al.2001).
