Crime concentration in Oslo - an explorative analysis of the spatial distribution of burglary and vehicle theft

Abstract

The last decades we have seen a large preventive move in western policing with a use of place-based policing. In Norway too, greater pressure has been put on the police force to prevent and reduce crime at places – but to execute this work successfully, any actor would require knowledge about if, where and why crime cluster at certain locations. This thesis analyses the spatial concentration and distribution of commercial- and residential burglaries and motor vehicle theft in Oslo, Norway using quantitative methods, including GIS-technology. Drawing on central theoretical perspectives and previous empirical work in the field of environmental criminology it aims at investigating to what degree these crimes are spatially concentrated at a relatively small number of places in the city of Oslo, what characterize these hot spots, and what environmental characteristics highlighted in previous research seem to generate the crimes. The analysis shows crime is an opportunistic by-product of routine activities in people’s lives, and that risk and effort are important factors in offenders’ contextual calculation about whether commit crime. This gives a strong implication of crime prevention through securitization by altering or controlling physical environments, or peoples’ perceptions of these. Environmental criminology thus brings great potential for this “new” police task of crime prevention. Yet, although spatial concentration is found for all crimes a main finding is some are not concentrated as tightly as expected from central assumptions in this field, such as the application of the 80/20 rule to crimes ecological concentration and the following “law of crime concentration at places”. Therefore, these should not be taken at face value in future research or policy discussions and we need more contextual information of crimes spatial distribution in Norway to most efficiently reduce or prevent crime at hot spots.