About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline
LOG IN
LOG IN

3 Crime Sci. 1 (2014)

handle is hein.journals/crimsci3 and id is 1 raw text is: Newton et al. Crime Science 2014, 3:1 http://www.crimesciencejournal.com/content/3/1/1 Crime Science A C pe A e Above and below: measuring crime risk in and around underground mass transit systems Andrew D Newton , Henry Partridge23 and Andy Gill2 Abstract This paper explores crime risk within and around major transit systems, specifically by investigating theft of personal property offences on the London Underground. The majority of studies to date have examined theft above ground, predominantly at transit stations, although some studies have compared this with theft in nearby surrounding areas. This study is unique and extends this analysis to theft during transit journeys below ground. The location of such offences is often unknown, only discovered by the victim sometime after the event. A new technique termed Interstitial Crime Analysis is used to better measure the location of below ground theft offences; these are compared with above ground thefts using Spearman's Rank tests for association. Key findings are: below ground theft offences are concentrated at particular stations; risk is highest during morning and late afternoon peak travel periods; at these peak times there is an elevated risk of theft at both high risk stations and in their surrounding environs; and that this relationship is not evident during the inter-peak and late night time periods. The findings suggest offenders who operate below ground may also operate above ground on major transit systems. This has clear policy implications for policing these settings and highlights the importance of joint operations and information sharing between transit agencies and local police forces operating near major transit systems. Keywords: Theft; Pocket-picking; Underground; Subway; Interstitial crime-analysis; Mass transit systems; Public transport Background and context This empirical study examines theft from person of- fences on underground mass transit systems. Four po- tential settings of theft are identified; in the vicinity of a station but outside its boundary; inside a station bound- ary before the paid access barrier; within the paid access barrier outside of carriages, and; inside a rail carriage. For the purpose of this paper the first two settings are described as above ground settings and the latter two as below ground. This paper examines theft at these differ- ent settings, in order to gain a better understanding of risk. Specifically, the aim of this paper is to explore whether there is a transmission of theft risk, from out- side the transit system above ground, to inside the tran- sit system below ground, and vice versa. The research evidence here is mixed. On the one hand, studies have asserted that the impact of a well- designed secure transit hub, is to actually insulate itself * Correspondence: a.d.newton@hud.ac.uk 1The Applied Criminology Centre HHR2/10, The University of Huddersfield, Queensgate, Huddersfield HD1 3DH, UK Full list of author information is available at the end of the article 1Ei Springer from surrounding high crime risk environments (Clarke et al. 1996; La Vigne 1997). In direct contrast, other studies have found that transit hubs with the highest levels of crime tend to be situated within high-crime areas (Block and Block, 2000; Loukaitou-Sideris et al. 2002; Newton, 2008, Ceccato et al. 2011). No studies to date have examined this for theft from person offences, and this study explicitly addresses this research gap. In order to carry out this research however, it is neces- sary to introduce a new technique, Interstitial Crime Analysis (ICA). This is used to improve the measure- ment estimates of the location of below ground theft on transit systems. Victims of theft offences on transit sys- tems often have imprecise knowledge about where and when a theft occurred during their journey, they were not aware at the time an item was taken and only dis- cover it sometime after the event. Options for estimating the location of a theft which could have occurred at or be- tween several stations traversed during a transit journey include; using the start station, end station, a random sta- tion, or a midpoint station. On the London Underground (LU) the technique that has been traditionally used is the © 2014 Newton et al.; licensee Springer. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Purchase Access

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Contact Us

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

Log In

profiles profiles most