Place and time in the Criminology of Place
| Author | Jon Bannister,Ellie Bates,Anthony O’Sullivan |
| DOI | 10.1177/1362480617733726 |
| Published date | 01 August 2019 |
| Date | 01 August 2019 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1362480617733726
Theoretical Criminology
2019, Vol. 23(3) 315 –332
© The Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/1362480617733726
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Place and time in the
Criminology of Place
Jon Bannister
Manchester Metropolitan University, UK
Anthony O’Sullivan
University of Glasgow, UK
Ellie Bates
University of Edinburgh, UK
Abstract
This article evaluates developments in the ecological analysis of crime, which have
found their most recent expression in a Criminology of Place. We argue that
theoretical and methodological deficiencies are evident in the Criminology of Place
and associated literatures with respect to their underlying treatment of place, time
and causation. Big Data holds promise for helping address these shortfalls, but
dangers also. The successful advance of the Criminology of Place requires elevating
the why question to equal status with those of where and what in the analysis of
crime. Ultimately, the paper positions the progress towards and prospects for a
multi-scalar and time sensitive theoretical and empirical model of the Criminology
of Place.
Keywords
Big Data, causation, Criminology of Place, space, time
Corresponding author:
Jon Bannister, Department of Sociology, Geoffrey Manton Building, Rosamond Street West, Manchester
Metropolitan University, Manchester, M15 6LL, UK.
Email: Jon.Bannister@mmu.ac.uk
733726TCR0010.1177/1362480617733726Theoretical CriminologyBannister et al.
research-article2017
Article
316 Theoretical Criminology 23(3)
Introduction
Recent years have seen the blossoming of a Criminology of Place. Of particular note in
this regard has been the publication of several important works and edited volumes since
2012 (Taylor, 2015; Weisburd, 2015; Weisburd et al., 2012, 2016). Perceived failure of
existing crime theory to account for offender behaviour (Weisburd et al., 2012) has pro-
vided much of the stimulus to this growth of interest in crime at place. At the same time,
a range of fundamental policy drivers (the rise of new public management initiatives;
austerity imperatives; concerns to validate criminal justice system legitimacy) and tech-
nological facilitators (ICT, Big Data) have also helped stimulate and inform this litera-
ture, affording it both urgency and relevance while spawning a range of distinctly
place-based situational crime prevention policy interventions such as (most recently) hot
spot policing (Braga and Weisburd, 2010; Sherman et al., 1989).
It has been claimed that Criminology of Place represents ‘a radical departure from
current interests’ and a ‘turning point in the life course of criminology’ (Weisburd et al.,
2016: xix). Are such claims merited? Moreover, if they are, if we are at a turning point in
criminology, what do we need to do to advance theoretically, empirically and methodo-
logically? Our purpose in this article is to offer some thoughts on these questions.1 To
anticipate our conclusions somewhat, we contend the jury to be still out on how radical
or new the current emphasis on Criminology of Place is. Moreover, the extent to which
such claims do turn out to be true depends on how a range of broader conceptual, meth-
odological and empirical matters are dealt with.
In the next section, as context for our subsequent argument, we situate current
Criminology of Place theorizing within the broader evolutionary sweep of criminologi-
cal thinking, and highlight emerging interest (see Braga and Clarke, 2014; Weisburd
et al., 2012, 2014) in the integration of environmental criminology and social disorgani-
zation perspectives on crime within an explicit Criminology of Place framework. While
a welcome development, to succeed, such efforts at integration require appropriate con-
ceptualizations of place and time. Section three critiques treatments of place within crim-
inology, paying particular attention to the ideas of hot spots and neighbourhoods, their
ontological justification and methodological treatment, and how the matter of causation
is handled generally in the treatment of place. Section four considers the related question
of the role of time in Criminology of Place. The penultimate section explores the possi-
bilities and dangers for a Criminology of Place—and policy based upon it—that arise
from Big Data, while a final section offers some conclusions.
Theoretical and policy contexts
Initial interest in the geography of crime in the work of early researchers such as Guerry
(1833), Mayhew (1862) and Quetelet (1984), was followed by later contributions from
Burt (1925), McKenzie (1923) and, most significantly, Shaw and McKay (1942).2 The
principal focus of attention of the Chicago School, and of debate concerning the ecology
of crime, however, was the geographical distribution of the residences of offenders rather
than the locations at which crime occurred (Weisburd et al., 2012). From the end of the
Second World War to the 1970s, criminology privileged person over place; the key mat-
ter to be explained was why crime is committed, and analysis conducted over this period
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