ABSTRACT
France was the ›rst country to keep oŸcial statistics of crime. A. M. Guerry, with assistance from geographer Adriano Balbi, published a map that compared crime with education in 1829 (Morris, 1957). Signi›cantly, Guerry’s decision to map crime levels was used by ecologists of the time and was also used later by the Chicago school, a term identifying a group of researchers from various universities in Chicago who gave rise to urban sociology (Morris, 1957). Guerry identi›ed the variations in rates of crimes against persons as well as property crimes among the dierent regions of France. Guerry was the
›rst to provide evidence that criminal acts involved the characteristics of places where people lived.
