ABSTRACT

The story of criminology’s fascination with space is a long and Byzantine one, encompassing everything from the early nineteenth-century cartes thématiques of Adolphe de Quételet, to the very latest developments in global information systems and computer-aided crime mapping. However, as the history of criminology is told, when it comes to criminology’s relationship with (‘criminogenic’) space, one moment stands out above all others. Such is the influence of the work of the Chicago School of sociology that few criminological scholars working today will not be familiar, at least to some extent, with the School’s various theoretical and empirical analyses of the link between crime and ‘the environment’. The specific details of the Chicago School approach have been well rehearsed elsewhere and thus need no further exposition here. Instead, I start this essay with recourse to the Chicago School by way of a provocation. My opening position here is that, for all its numerous theoretical insights and undeniable disciplinary impact, the Chicago School’s legacy within criminology is not without its problems. Specifically, the School’s interpretation and utilization of ‘space’ set the geography of crime down a very particular and in my opinion rather narrow conceptual path, from which it has rarely deviated. This chapter is an attempt to plot some possible alternative routes; the ultimate goal being to challenge contemporary criminologists to think differently about the role and the nature of space within our discipline.