ABSTRACT
Social scientists interested in place and crime has identified themselves with different fields since the early twentieth century. Chicago School sociologists used terms such as ‘urban sociology’, ‘human ecology’ and ‘ecology of crime’. Oberwittler argues that the effect of deprivation on crime is greater in the US than in Europe because the US, with its weak welfare system, experiences greater levels of extreme deprivation. Many criminological debates moved away from a traditional focus on the causes of crime to a ‘post-welfare’ focus on crime prevention and management. In many of Britain’s towns and cities the expansion of the night-time economy has been an important way of sustaining urban prosperity. A given place may have been designed as ‘safe’ but different groups of people may continue to experience it as risky or dangerous and act accordingly. A spatially aware criminology considers the relationship between crime, control and place.
