ABSTRACT
Calvin Schmid’s massive study of crime in Seattle tended to support the gradient pattern in a general way, but showed very different spatial patternings for different crimes. This chapter presents the results of a study of the spatial distribution of residential burglary in Tallahassee, the capital city of the State of Florida. It attempts to place the results in the contexts of the ecological tradition in criminology, the modern perspective of crime prevention through environmental design, and the limited empirical literature on burglary. The research sought to examine the patterning of burglary against the residential patterns of the city. In combination, the mathematics and the suggestive but scattered findings of criminologists and sociologists led to formulation of a hypothesis: border blocks should exhibit higher burglary rates than interior blocks. The difference between the mean burglary rate for interior blocks and border blocks in the percent single family topology was even more striking than the difference in the average rent topology.
