《CAREERS OF PLACES》.pdfVIP

HOT SPOTS OF CRIME AND CRIMINAL CAREERS OF PLACES by Lawrence W. Sherman University of Maryland, College Park Abstract: The explanation of crime has been preoccupied with individuals and communities as units of analysis. Recent work on offender decision making (Cornish and Clarke, 1986), situations (Clarke, 1983, 1992), envi- ronments (Brantingham and Brantingham 1981, 1993), routine activities (Cohen and Felson, 1979; Felson, 1994), and the spatial organization of drug dealing in the U.S. suggest a new unit of analysis: places. Crime is concen- trated heavily in a Jew hot spots of crime (Sherman et aL 1989). The concentration of crime among repeat places is more intensive than it is among repeat offenders (Spelman and Eck, 1989). The components of this concen- tration are analogous to the components of the criminal careers of persons: onset, desistance, continuance, specialization, and desistance. The theoret- ical explanationfor variance in these components is also stronger at the level of places than it is for individuals. These facts suggest a need for rethinking theories of crime, as well as a new approach to theorizing about crime for public policy. On Valentines Day 1989, in the capital of the U . S. , 14 people were hit by gunshots . Four of them were shot on one block of Drak e Place, S.E . One of the wounded , age 26, died ; another, a 15-year-old girl, wa s found in her apartment with 1 1 firearms, including a machine gun , a shotgun and five bullet-proof vest s (Horwitz and Goldberg, 1989) . Thi s one small block of Drake Place and its adjacent public housing complex had wit- ness