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Encyclopedia of Criminology and Criminal Justice pp 3010–3023Cite as

Measuring Crime Specializations and Concentrations

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Overview

Research on crime at places is a rapidly growing literature. Though Eck and Weisburd (1995) coined the term “crime at places,” the starting point of this literature was Sherman et al. (1989) in a microspatial analysis of predatory crime in Minneapolis. This research area finds that calls for police service are highly concentrated in very few places: 50 % of calls for police service are generated from 5 % of street segments (or less), particularly when one considers detailed crime classifications (Sherman et al. 1989; Andresen and Malleson 2011). Moreover, research has shown that spatial crime patterns at microspatial units of analysis vary significantly across crime classifications (Andresen and Malleson 2011). Because of this consistency, Weisburd et al. (2012) put forth the Law of Crime Concentrations.

One implication from this research is that opportunity surfaces for different crimes, though they may overlap, are different – the opportunity surface for a crime is the...

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Criminology, Institute for Canadian Urban Research Studies, Simon Fraser University, 8888 University Drive, Burnaby, BC V5A 1S6, Canada

    Martin A. Andresen

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  1. Martin A. Andresen
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Correspondence to Martin A. Andresen .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement (NSCR), Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Gerben Bruinsma

  2. VU University Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Gerben Bruinsma

  3. Department of Criminology, Law and Society, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA

    David Weisburd

  4. Faculty of Law, The Hebrew University, Mt. Scopus, Jerusalem, Israel

    David Weisburd

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Andresen, M.A. (2014). Measuring Crime Specializations and Concentrations. In: Bruinsma, G., Weisburd, D. (eds) Encyclopedia of Criminology and Criminal Justice. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-5690-2_298

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-5690-2_298

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4614-5689-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4614-5690-2

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