Environmental Predictors of a Drug Offender Crime Script: A Systematic Social Observation of Google Street View Images and CCTV Footage

Abstract

The extent to which environmental context has been considered when developing crime scripts has been limited to descriptions of the locations offenders visit during the crime. This research contributes a description of the environmental characteristics of an open-air drug market and identifies environmental facilitators and inhibitors toward offender actions during a drug-selling crime script. Closed-circuit television (CCTV) camera footage is combined with Google Street View images to determine whether physical disorder, decay, and “crime generators” characterize the drug market under study. There is little evidence to suggest that the former two dimensions influence the crime sequence; however, crime generators such as retail facilities and bars and liquor stores are environmental facilitators toward a drug-selling crime script; and transit locations, corner stores, and public parks are environmental inhibitors toward the script.

Measuring Procedural Justice Policy Adherence During Use of Force Events: The Body-Worn Camera as a Performance Monitoring Tool

“…Observations are not independent of the observer and, in Finlay's (2002) discussion of reflexivity as intersubjective reflection, she notes, "Psychodynamic researchers remind us to explore how conversation or text affects us and to reflect on what we bring to it ourselves" (p. 217). Thus while prior SSOs have included a single coder when appropriate (e.g., Porter et al, 2018;Sytsma et al, 2020), we acknowledge that the results presented here owe to the positionality of a single coder.…”

Conducting a Systematic Social Observation of Body-Camera Footage: Methodological and Practical Insights

“…Using our ongoing project as an inroad, we discuss and provide specific examples of practical challenges associated with the use of BWC footage as a data source and discuss how such challenges were navigated. While our insights are broadly based on a singular research project, the authors have ample experience conducting SSOs generally, and specifically in the context of the VDA framework (see Piza & Sytsma, 2016;Sytsma, Connealy, & Piza, 2021). Thus, previous research endeavors informed the current project.…”

Understanding the Predictors of Street Robbery Hot Spots: A Matched Pairs Analysis and Systematic Social Observation

“…The author individually coded each segment in the study to ensure consistent construct interpretation was maintained across all variables and units. Single coders have been previously utilized in prior research (Sytsma et al, 2020) and have been deemed appropriate when the coding schema requires less subjective interpretation (Potter & Levine-Donnerstein, 1999). The nature of the present study involves the coding of variables that are binary, operationalized as visibly present or absent, and are not highly subjective or discretionary.…”

“…GSV has also emerged as a popular tool in criminal justice and social science research focused on characterizing small scale environments (He et al, 2016; Hsu & Miller, 2017; Langton & Steenbeek, 2017; Vandeviver, 2014). Previous remote SSOs in criminology have used GSV to assess the sensory experiences of crime and the importance of area appearance in fear of crime and recounting victimization (Hur & Nasar, 2014; Toet & Van Schaik, 2012), and to evaluate the characteristics that influence drug transaction decision-making in Newark, NJ (Sytsma et al, 2020). In public health and city planning, researchers have also used remote SSO to conduct environmental audits to designate different types and perceptions of built environments in urban settings (Salesses et al, 2013).…”