ABSTRACT
The environmental criminologists Brantingham and Brantingham (1981) have argued that criminal incidents essentially occur when four different dimensions of crime – a law, an offender, a target and a place – are all in concurrence. They describe environmental criminology as the study of the fourth dimension, the study of where and when crimes occur. However, while academic interest in environmental explanations of crime and criminal behaviour has grown considerably since the 1970s, the recognition of the relevance of geographical setting to levels of crime is far from new.
