SPEA professors discover higher crime rates in populated land areas

A recent study published by two School of Public and Environmental Affairs  professors found the way land is used in a specific area might affect the rate of criminal activity within the area.

Thomas Stucky and John Ottensmann, professors at IU-Purdue University Indianapolis, published a study looking at the correlation between urban land usage and violent crime activity, which they defined as rape, homicide, aggravated assault and robbery. The two professors published their work in the November issue of Criminology.

Although it isn’t the first study to look at the relationship between land usage and criminal activity, it is unique due to the 30 diverse categories of land usage and the smaller unit size analyzed.

What they found was somewhat surprising. Apart from socioeconomic factors, land use affects crime counts, Stucky said.

“An interesting find was that levels of crime were higher in areas of more dense residential land use,” Ottensmann said.

Other findings included higher crime rates in areas with large amounts of commercial land use and highly traveled streets. Lower crime rates could be found around high income residential living and industrial areas, as well as parks and schools.

What Ottensmann said surprised him the most was that although there was not an elevated crime rate around schools, there was a larger number of disturbances.

“The key finding is that to fully understand crime in an area, you have to understand both socioeconomic factors and land usage,” Stucky said.

Stucky and Ottensmann said they don’t expect that their findings will produce new policy, but they do hope to help law enforcement officers as well as scholars think differently about what factors affect crime.

“This data provides for people in law enforcement some context in terms of where relative risks are greater,” Ottensmann said. “It offers another piece of the puzzle in helping understand the context in which they’re operating.”

The study began after a lunch conversation where Ottensmann explained to Stucky his current work. Ottensmann made an urban simulation model of Marion County and was mapping the different types of land usage in Indianapolis.

“It all started in a brown bag lunch session,” Stucky said.

He was intrigued by Ottensmann’s work and attended a seminar where he was speaking. Following the seminar, Stucky suggested the two professors collaborate, combining their two interests, urban planning and criminal activity, and come up with some new interesting data.

“Some of the uniqueness of the study is indeed in the collaboration between me and Thomas,” Ottensmann said.

Stucky and Ottensmann then started to combine their data. The data used in this study was obtained through the IU Public Policy Institute, of which both Stucky and Ottensmann are members.

“We get access to large data sets to work with and so we’re able to work on nifty questions,” Ottensmann said.

First, the authors mapped all the different kinds of land usage throughout Indianapolis. They then added information to the map about violent criminal activity between 2000 and 2004. The two then decided to break the city into 1,000-square-foot grid cells for easier analysis. They considered the type of land usage in each area and the incidence of violent crime. They also took into consideration socioeconomic factors such as population, income, ethnicity and poverty.

David Good, a School of Public and Environmental Affairs professor at IU, said the information in the study is reasonable and the findings are believable. For example, higher crime rates are found in more highly dense residential areas.

“The more densely packed a neighborhood is, the more stress it causes ... so financial distress, that’s a hard thing to live with, you’re on the edge,” Good said. “There’s conflict. That’s not an unexpected thing.”

However, Good said he agrees with the authors that though the information is useful, it won’t be able to directly affect urban planning policy.

“I guess there are some things that are outcomes here that really seem to be explainable. How it translates into policy, that’s a much harder thing,” he said.