Urban Crime, Criminals, and Victims

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.

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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.