Alternative conceptions of crime and place

The model put forward in Chapter 6 construes neighbourhoods as having both distal and proximate influences on area crime rates. The distal influence of a neighbourhood arises from the fact that it shapes the extent to which the effects of economic stress on parenting practices are buffered by social supports. The proximate influence of neighbourhoods on delinquency generation arises from the fact that the number of active delinquents in a neighbourhood shapes the rate of interaction between juveniles susceptible to involvement in crime and those already involved and, therewith, the rate of entry into crime.

This conception of the factors which shape crime-prone areas differs in some significant ways from a number of other branches of criminological theory concerned with the spatial distribution of crime. Some theorists have argued that the spatial distribution of crime in large measure reflects the way in which geographical mobility, population heterogeneity and family dissolution affect the social equilibrium of neighbourhoods. Later theorists working within the same general paradigm have highlighted the way in which public disorder, fear of crime and public housing policy can influence the ‘trajectory’ of crime in a neighbourhood. Criminal opportunity theorists have argued that the spatial distribution of crime reflects the spatial distribution of criminal opportunities and incentives rather than the spatial distribution of motivated offenders.