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| REVIEW OF STUDIES ON CRIMINAL GEOGRAPHY |
| LIU Da-qian, XIU Chun-liang |
| School of Urban and Environmental Sciences, Northeast Normal University, Changchun 130024, China |
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Abstract Crime studies have become a collective focus of researchers from geography, planning, sociology etc. In terms of the specific contents of crime geography, the authors firstly depict the developments of the crime mapping and criminal hotspots detection since the exploration of crime distribution, crime mapping and hotspots identification are the starting points and fundamental base of crime analysis. Then the social disorganization theory and routine activities theory which are most influential in the field of criminal geography are introduced. The main ideas, the development from the beginning till now as well as the correlation of both theories are described and discussed. Social disorganization theory deriving from the Chicago school considers the environmental condition to be the most important determinants for the occurrences of crime. This theory argued that a high degree of social and economic deprivation, population turnover, and ethnic heterogeneity in a neighborhood which will cause the social disorganization are three aspects that may destroy the ability of social control from the residents and stimulate more people to commit crimes. Routine activities theory focuses on the opportunities created by the routine activities of people. Although there are some features in common between both theories, such as the emphasis of social control, the discrepancies between them do exist, the most significant one of which is what causes the occurrence of crime. Social disorganization theory treats the momentum which are usually generated in the tough environment as the main reason for criminal activities, while routine activities emphasize how much the opportunities are created by the routine activities of people is the core issue. Three steps were generalized which are the primary attempt, slow development and micro orientation respectively. The importance to conduct research on criminal geography in China is being realized by the public as well as the authorities, more and more valuable data will be available to the researchers, so it is promising to see the proliferation of criminal geography in China. Therefore some suggestions on promoting the development of domestic studies in terms of criminal geography are proposed at last.
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Received: 30 August 2011
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2012, Vol. 27 
