Human Mobility and Crime: Theoretical Approaches and Novel Data Collection Strategies

Abstract

This review outlines approaches to explanations of crime that incorporate the concept of human mobility—or the patterns of movement throughout space of individuals or populations in the context of everyday routines—with a focus on novel strategies for the collection of geographically referenced data on mobility patterns. We identify three approaches to understanding mobility–crime linkages: Place and neighborhood approaches characterize local spatial units of analysis of varying size with respect to the intersection in space and time of potential offenders, victims, and guardians. Person-centered approaches emphasize the spatial trajectories of individuals and person–place interactions that influence crime risk. Ecological network approaches consider links between persons or collectivities based on shared activity locations, capturing influences of broader systems of interconnection on spatial- and individual-level variation in crime. We review data collection strategies for the measurement of mobility across these approaches, considering both the challenges and promise of mobility-based research for criminology. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Criminology, Volume 4 is January 13, 2021. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

Triple Disadvantage: Neighborhood Networks of Everyday Urban Mobility and Violence in U.S. Cities

“…Recognizing inter-neighborhood connections forged through residents’ homophily and daily travels, urban sociologists are beginning to conceptualize a city’s neighborhoods from a network perspective (Browning, Pinchak, and Calder 2020). Studies of single urban areas find that spatial proximity and social similarity are associated with the formation of inter-neighborhood ties, although spatial proximity seems to matter most (Hipp and Perrin 2009; Schaefer 2011).…”

Neighborhood Isolation during the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…With the growth of large data sets that allow researchers to track the movement of millions of individuals, a growing body of sociological research focuses on developing theory and methods to understand the forms and consequences of everyday mobility (Browning et al, 2021;Cagney et al, 2020;Levy et al, 2020;Prestby et al, 2020;Phillips et al, 2019;Wang et al, 2018). In this line of work mobility refers to the aggregate daily patterns of travel between neighborhoods.…”

“…Studying newly released prisoners looking for work, they documented that those who spent time during the day in places with more economic opportunities tended to have better success securing employment. Recent work on crime has similarly found connections between where people spend time and their exposure to crime, as well as the spread of violent crime across neighborhoods (Levy et al, 2020;Papachristos et al, 2011;Browning et al, 2021). For example, Levy and colleagues documented that network disadvantage measured as inequalities in both the places visited and visitors' origin, interacted with neighborhood disadvantage and predicted the spread of violent crime across a city.…”

Carjacking: A Comparison Between Campinas, Brazil and Detroit, Michigan

“…It is plausible that new sources of human activity data will provide more adequate denominators for predicting carjacking risks and eventually guiding place-based methods for reducing carjacking. These sources could include social media data, cellphone data, traffic monitoring, and the like (Browning et al, 2020). Another approach to improving place-based analysis of carjacking is to disaggregate types of carjacking.…”