ABSTRACT
Environmental criminology is the study of crime, criminality, and victimization as they relate, first, to particular places, and secondly, to the way that individuals and organizations shape their activities spatially, and in so doing are in turn influenced by place-based or spatial factors. Environmental criminology would be of little interest – either to scholars or those concerned with criminal policy – if the geographical distribution of offences, or of offender residence, were random. This chapter begins with a fairly full explication of the work of Shaw and McKay, because it has remained a central reference point for much of the subsequent research. When the study of criminology at the University of Sheffield began, in the late 1960s, it was decided that it would be sensible to attempt, as a first major research project, a statistical study of recorded crime and offending in the city.
