Crime in Context: Utilizing Risk Terrain Modeling and Conjunctive Analysis of Case Configurations to Explore the Dynamics of Criminogenic Behavior Settings.

Risk terrain modeling (RTM) is a geospatial crime analysis tool designed to diagnose environmental risk factors for crime and identify the places where their spatial influence is collocated to produce vulnerability for illegal behavior. However, the collocation of certain risk factors’ spatial influences may result in more crimes than the collocation of a different set of risk factors’ spatial influences. Absent from existing RTM outputs and methods is a straightforward method to compare these relative interactions and their effects on crime. However, as a multivariate method for the analysis of discrete categorical data, conjunctive analysis of case configurations (CACC) can enable exploration of the interrelationships between risk factors’ spatial influences and their varying effects on crime occurrence. In this study, we incorporate RTM outputs into a CACC to explore the dynamics among certain risk factors’ spatial influences and how they create unique environmental contexts, or behavior settings, for crime at microlevel places. We find that most crime takes place within a few unique behavior settings that cover a small geographic area and, further, that some behavior settings were more influential on crime than others. Moreover, we identified particular environmental risk factors that aggravate the influence of other risk factors. We suggest that by focusing on these microlevel environmental crime contexts, police can more efficiently target their resources and further enhance place-based approaches to policing that fundamentally address environmental features that produce ideal opportunities for crime

How the physical landscape of the urban environment affects drug dealing

Many illegal drugs are sold in open air markets on the street. But what determines where drug transactions take place? In new research, Jeremy D. Barnum, Walter L. Campbell, Sarah Trocchio, Joel M. Caplan, and Leslie W. Kennedy examine how drug dealers and buyers can take advantage of features of the urban environment in Chicago to find more effective places to make drug deals. Assessing 28 of these environmental features, they find that drug deals were much more likely to take place near to foreclosures, problem landlords and broken street lighting. They write that their findings could be used to inform more place-based policing strategies aimed at tackling drug markets

Risk Terrain Modeling for Spatial Risk Assessment.

Spatial factors can influence the seriousness and longevity of crime problems. Risk terrain modeling (RTM) identifies the spatial risks that come from features of a landscape and models how they colocate to create unique behavior settings for crime. The RTM process begins by testing a variety of factors thought to be geographically related to crime incidents. Valid factors are selected and then weighted to produce a final model that basically paints a picture of places where crime is statistically most likely to occur. This article addresses crime as the outcome event, but RTM can be applied to a variety of other topics, including injury prevention, public health, traffic accidents, and urban development. RTM is not difficult to use for those who have a basic skillset in statistics and Geographic Information Systems, or GISs. To make RTM more accessible to a broad audience of practitioners, however, Rutgers University developed the Risk Terrain Modeling Diagnostics (RTMDx) Utility, an app that automates RTM. This article explains the technical steps of RTM and the statistical procedures that the RTMDx Utility uses to diagnose underlying spatial factors of crime at existing high-crime places and to identify the most likely places where crime will emerge in the future, even if it has not occurred there already. A demonstrative case study focuses on the process, methods, and actionable results of RTM when applied to property crime in Chicago, Illinois, using readily accessible resources and open public data

The crime kaleidoscope: A cross-jurisdictional analysis of place features and crime in three urban environments

Research identifies various place features (e.g., bars, schools, public transportation stops) that generate or attract crime. What is less clear is how the spatial influence of these place features compares across relatively similar environments, even for the same crime. In this study, risk terrain modeling (RTM), a geospatial crime forecasting and diagnostic tool, is utilized to identify place features that increase the risk of robbery and their particular spatial influence in Chicago, Illinois; Newark, New Jersey; and Kansas City, Missouri. The results show that the risk factors for robbery are similar between environments, but not necessarily identical. Further, some factors were riskier for robbery and affected their surrounding landscape in different ways that others. Consistent with crime pattern theory, the results suggest that the broader organization of the environmental backcloth affects how constituent place features relate to and influence crime. Implications are discussed with regard to research and practice

Exposição de corpos humanos: o uso de cadáveres como entretenimento e mercadoria

"Espécimes" inodoros, secos e quase eternos, produzidos a partir de cadáveres humanos por uma técnica chamada plastinação, estão sendo amplamente usados como modelos de anatomia em exposições e faculdades de medicina. Milhões de leigos já viram corpos dissecados em uma das espetaculares exposições de anatomia pelo mundo e um novo mercado on-line de "espécimes" humanos plastinados está crescendo. Mais do que transformações físico-químicas, a plastinação, associada a outros procedimentos, também realiza uma transformação simbólica que reduz o corpo-pessoa a corpo-objeto para neutralizar a poluição e o tabu associados aos cadáveres humanos. Contudo, as circunstâncias obscuras sobre como esses corpos foram doados, comprados ou mesmo roubados traz o status de pessoa de volta aos corpos, assim como chama a nossa atenção para novas questões éticas e morais.<br>Odorless, dry and almost everlasting "specimens", produced from human corpses by a technique called plastination, are being used as anatomy models in exhibitions and medical schools. Millions of lay people have already seen dissected corpses in one of the spectacular human anatomy exhibitions around the world and a new on-line market for plastinated human "specimens" is growing. More than chemical and physical transformations, plastination, associated with other procedures, also makes a symbolic transformation that reduces the person-body into object-body in order to neutralize the pollution and the taboo associated with human corpses. But unclear circumstances about these bodies and questions as to whether they have been donated, sold, or even stolen bring status as "people" back to the corpses and draws our attention to new ethical and moral questions