Urban Crime, Criminals, and Victims: The Swedish Experience in an Anglo-American Comparative Perspective

ISBN-13: 9781461390794 / Angielski / Miękka / 2013 / 271 str.

Per-Olof Wikstrom

Opis

Crime is largely an urban phenomenon, but the specifically urban and area dimen- sions of the social processes that are connected with crime have been seriously understated in much recent criminological work ... Such a claim could not have been made forty years ago. (Baldwin & Bottoms, 1976, p. 1). The above statement by Baldwin and Bottoms about the neglect in crimi- nology of the urban dimension of crime was made in the mid-1970s. However, in the last decade there has been a significant upswing in theory and research on crime in the urban environment. Also, new areas oftheory and research into urban crime have come into focus. (For overviews see Brantingham & Brantingham, 1984; Davidson, 1981.) One very good example of the increasing interest in urban crime is the recent volume of Crime and Justice entitled "Communities and Crime" (Reiss & Tonry, 1986), in which Reiss makes a strong argument for the importance of the study of crime in urban communities and for the linking of the ecological and individual traditions in theory and research on crime. A review of the literature on crime in urban environments shows, not unexpectedly, that Anglo-American research heavily dominates the scene (Wikstrom, 1982; 1987b). Hence, much of the experience we have on urban crime is based on North American and British research and theory.

Spis treści

1 Introduction.- Scope and Aim of Study.- Some Brief Notes on Swedish Society and Its Crime.- 2 The Rate, Structure, and Trends in Urban Crime.- The Rate of Crime.- Trends in Crime.- Explaining the Difference.- 3 The Urban Offender.- Offenders in Urban Crime.- Crime and Its Development in the Urban Population.- The Distribution of Crime in the Urban Population.- Specialization and Versatility in Crime.- Age Patterns.- 4 The Social Contexts of Urban Crime.- Contextual Crime Analysis.- Urban Violence.- Urban Vandalism.- Urban Serious Theft.- Conclusion.- 5 The Urban Victim.- The Victimological Approach.- 6 Stockholm: Its Crime and Urban Structure.- The Research Area.- Crime Rates and Crime Trends in the City of Stockholm.- The Basic Units of Analysis.- The Inner- and Outer-City Areas.- Housing in Stockholm.- The Factorial Social Ecology of Stockholm.- Grouping Wards to Major Types of Urban Environments.- 7 Housing, Population Composition, and Offending.- The Offender Residential Distribution.- The Offender Rate Distributions.- Age Structure and Offender Rates.- The Individual-Level Relationship Between Housing and Offending in Childhood and Youth.- Zero-Order Correlations.- Population Composition and Offending.- Familism, SES, Social Problem Households, and Offending.- Population Composition and Offending Within Different Types of Housing.- Housing, Population Composition, and Offending: An Integrated Model.- 8 Routine Activities, Area Crime, and Victimization Patterns.- The Crime Area Distribution.- The Area Crime Rate Distributions.- Crime and Distance.- Explaining Area Crime Distribution.- The Area Distribution of Victims of Personal Crime.- 9 Integration and Discussion of Findings.- Urbanization and Crime.- The Urban Offender.- The Urban Victim.- City Structure and the Rate and Structure of Crime.- References.- Appendix A The Stockholm 1982 Crime Survey.- Appendix B Legal Definitions of Crimes Included in the Stockholm 1982 Crime Survey.- Appendix C Definitions of Variables Used in the Factor Analysis of Stockholm Urban Structure.