ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book discusses the relationships commonly found between environment and crime and some theoretical perspectives often used to explain these findings the social disorganization, social control, social resources, and sub-cultural perspectives. It shows how offender crime rates may be affected by geographical selection of individuals and by local environment. The book considers micro- and macro-level aspects of influences in areas. It describes cross-sectional analyses made and their results and the longitudinal analyses and their results. The book deals with criminological research on crime among residents in urban areas. The micro-macro link between individual-level independent properties and area crime is modeled and empirically analyzed. Several local social processes can be assumed to involve the long-term residents much more than newcomers, and this fact can be used in the analysis of the influence on crime of independent properties, including two types of aggregated micro-level interaction.
