CRIME PATTERN ANALYSIS – IMPORTANCE IN MANAGING RISK

The safety and security of staff and properties is of prime

importance for the smooth functioning and profitability of

any organization. The role of security department in an

organization has grown exponentially during the past few

years. As stated by Sennewald (2003:19), ‘during the past

five decades, the security function has climbed up from the

depths of organizational existence... Security is now viewed

as a critical part of most organizations today with security

professionals reporting directly to senior management’. The

role of a security manager is considered to be of vital

importance in any organization.

The purpose of this essay will be to discuss the role of a

security and crime risk manager in an organization and to

analyze how useful the knowledge of crime patterns could be

to assist his/her role. In order to achieve this end, a

review will be made of the available literature on crime

pattern theory and crime pattern analysis and how it can be

used to facilitate the development of crime reduction and

loss control strategies by a security manager. Review would

be made of the development of crime patterns by the Chicago

School, routine activity theory and rational choice

perspective, leading to the development of the crime pattern

theory and crime pattern analysis. An attempt would be made

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to discuss the relationship between these theories and how

they can be useful to a security and crime risk manager in

understanding crime patterns. In order to maintain focus of

this assignment, the role of a security and crime risk

manager in a United Nations operation would be evaluated as

an example. The security manager in such a setting has to

work often in difficult and hazardous conditions, deal with

a wide variety of crime risks, poor law enforcement and has

a huge responsibility to minimize and mitigate these risks.

Thus, it would be useful to analyze the extent to which the

knowledge of crime patterns can assist his/her role and the

impact it would have on the organization.

First of all, it would be useful to understand the

importance of having a security department and a

professional security and crime risk manager in an

organization. The basic purpose of the security department

is often summarized as ‘to protect company assets and ensure

a safe and secure environment for customers and staff’

(Bamfield, 2003). Kofi Annan (2004), former Secretary

General of the United Nations, said “Staff Security is not a

privilege or a luxury, not an afterthought or a burden. It

is not an option. It is a necessity and essential part of

the cost of doing business”. In this context, the role of a

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modern day security manager in any organization is clearly

laid out. According to Rogers (2006:66), ‘Security managers

are responsible for directing the solution of security

problems in a cost and performance effective manner’.

Sennewald (2003) similarly identifies one of the major

remits of the security manager as being the limiting of

losses to his or her organization. The security manager has

to work towards preventing crime and losses by denying

opportunities to offenders. In order to achieve this end,

he/she must be able to adopt strategies that identify both

the scale and nature of threats to the organization, as well

as introducing measures to counter such threats. In order to

understand how crime pattern analysis can assist the role of

a security manager in this aspect, it would be appropriate

to have an understanding of the occurrence of crime and the

development of various theories explaining this occurrence

and the crime patterns.

Criminology developed in the late 18th century and

criminologists have been studying the relationship between

crime and place since early 19th century, after the first

annual national crime statistics were published in France.

Adolphe Quetelet (1796-1874), a Belgian mathematician,

statistician and sociologist was among the first to analyze

these statistics and found considerable regularity in them

(Mannheim and Bernard, 2009). Similarly, French scholar

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Guerry (1833) and Henry Mayhew (1864) in U.K. analyzed the

incidence of crime in different areas (Department of

Criminology, 2009a). According to Brantingham and

Brantingham (2008), crimes do not occur randomly or

uniformly in time or space or society, across

neighbourhoods, or social groups, or during an individual’s

daily activities or during an individual’s lifetime.

Brantinghams further explain that understanding crime

requires concepts and models that can be used to account for

the patterned non-uniformity and non-randomness that

characterizes real criminal events.

The spatially-based studies of crime were developed during

the early 20th century by the Chicago School of

Sociologists. It comprised of researchers such as Ernest

Burgess, Robert Park and later, Clifford Shaw and Henry

McKay (Department of Criminology, 2009a). The Chicago

School developed a theory of crime and delinquency, which

was based on Ernest Burgess’s model of a city, and provided

a framework for explaining the social roots of crime.

Burgess (1928 as cited in Department of Criminology, 2009b)

model suggested that as cities expand in size, their

development is socially patterned and a city grows from the

centre outwards in a series of five concentric zones. The

zones were named central zone or business district,

transitional zone, the workers’ home zone, suburbia and

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commuter area. Shaw and McKay (1942 as cited in Department

of Criminology, 2009b), later on, adapted this basic model

to Chicago city in order to analyze crime and delinquency

rates in each of the concentric geographical areas. They

discovered that the highest crime rates were in the

transitional zones, which had the greatest ‘social

disorganization’. Although useful at that time, this model

is no longer applicable to most modern cities in the world,

as the mobility has vastly increased and patterning of

amenities has changed. However, it demonstrates the use of

crime patterns in attempting to reduce crime and led to the

development of two very important sociological theories for

the explanation of crime, i.e. the ‘routine activity theory’

and ‘rational choice perspective’.

Cohen and Felson in 1979 introduced a new concept, which

tried to explain the occurrence of a criminal event on

spatial as well as temporal basis rather than just depending

on the area and was named the ‘Routine Activity Theory’. As

Cohen and Felson (1979:590) state, ‘the probability that a

violation will occur at any specific time and place might be

taken as a function of the convergence of likely offenders

and suitable targets in the absence of capable guardians’.

This theory further suggested that ‘likely offender’ can be

any normal citizen for any reason and a ‘capable guardian’

does not need to be a police officer or security guard, but

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any person that may be in close proximity of the offender

and the target, who is able to witness the event or prevent

it. If any one of these factors is removed, then the

criminal event could be prevented.

The relevance of the routine activity theory to crime

patterns is the fact that it explains how criminal

opportunities come up during the normal routine activities

of normal people, thereby showing the spatial and temporal

aspects of crime. For example, this theory can explain the

occurrence of certain crimes at certain times and certain

locations like brawls near bars and pubs at night or during

weekends, shop-lifting inside the shopping centres during

certain hours and burglaries targeting secluded or

unattended households during night. However, the drawbacks

of this theory are that it excludes the motivation for

commission of a criminal act and it can only explain

offences when there is an ‘offender’ and a ‘target’, i.e.

‘direct-contact predatory violations’. So, it excluded

consensual and mutualistic crimes such as selling drugs,

gambling and prostitutions or individualistic offences like

suicide attempts, drug and alcohol abuse (Department of

Criminology, 2009a).

Felson, later on developed this theory in 1986 to introduce

the role of socializing factors in influencing potential

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offenders in time and place, arguing that any changes in the

structure of the community and community relations affected

the routine activities of offenders and their targets as

well as the presence or absence of capable guardians. During

this development, he introduced the fourth element, called

the ‘intimate handler’, who is a person whose relationship

with the potential offender influences the occurrence of the

offence (Felson, 1986 as cited in Department of Criminology,

2009a).

The issue of motivation of the offender and the role

environmental factors can play in influencing the decision

making process of the prospective offender is taken up by

the rational choice perspective. This theory allows for

analyzing how and why a possible offender comes to the

decision whether to offend or not. ‘The assumption is that

the offender is acting rationally and within this approach,

offenders are seen as decision-makers, they choose to become

involved in crime after weighing the costs and benefits of

this course of action’ (Cornish and Clarke, 2006:19 as cited

in Department of Criminology, 2009c:3-7).

The value of rational choice perspective is greatly enhanced

by the fact that it complements the routine activity theory

in explaining how a prospective offender decides to commit

criminal offences and how such offences occur in the

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backdrop of environmental factors. According to Cornish and

Clarke (2006 as cited in Department of Criminology, 2009c),

this theory can be used both to explain the required

conditions for the occurrence of specific offences (event

decisions) as well as to explain why people become involved

in crimes (involvement decisions). These decision making

stages are all influenced by complex situational variables,

which can be psychological, sociological and depending on

incentives and opportunities. Understanding this process of

what influences the decisions of a potential offender, the

various stages in commission of crime and modus operandi

employed in commission of various offences can help a

security and crime risk manager in understanding the

patterns of crime and offending leading to development of

suitable preventive measures.

The crime pattern theory develops from both routine activity

theory and the rational choice perspective by introducing

the notion of offenders acting on templates of crime

opportunity wherein the offender feels comfortable in the

commission of the criminal offence. As described earlier,

Brantingham and Brantingham (2008) believed that crimes are

neither uniform nor random and occurs in the context on an

‘environmental backcloth’, which is made up of a series of

factors including socio-cultural, economic, legal and the

physical environment. The Brantinghams, therefore take a

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view that crime is complex and multifarious but because of

its non-randomness or non-uniformity, there exist rules and

patterns to crime, both in the criminal events as well as

for the offenders. As these patterns can be recognized and

analyzed, they can be used to reduce and prevent crime

opportunities in a wide number of ways. The first step

towards understanding complex crime patterns is to study the

individual activities of people in general. According to

Brantinghams, ‘it should be remembered that people who

commit crimes spend most of their day in non-criminal

activities. What shapes non-criminal activities helps shape

criminal activities’ (Brantingham and Brantingham, 2008:

79). So, it can be said that the non-criminal activities

prospective criminal is involved in ‘….form a patterned

backcloth on which criminal activities can be played out’

(Brantingham and Brantingham, 1993: 268 as quoted in

Department of Criminology, 2009a: 6-17).

The Brantinghams crime pattern theory is based on eight

rules, which interplay to explain the commission of crime as

well as general formation of hot spots and to project

temporal and spatial displacement of crime, in case of crime

control interventions (Brantingham and Brantingham, 2008).

According to this theory, crime is clustered, but the shape

of the clustering is greatly influenced by where people live

within a particular city or neighbourhood, how and why they

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travel or move about (i.e. their activity space or daily

movement patterns), and how networks of people who know each

other spend their time (work related or leisure activities).

‘People who commit crimes have normal spatio-temporal

movement patterns like everyone else. The likely location

for a crime is near this normal activity and awareness

space. Crimes often occur at nodes where the victim’s

activity space and the offender’s activity space intersect’

(Brantingham and Brantingham, 2008: 84, 86).

The decision by the offender to commit crime depends on

their normal activity space as well as their ‘crime

template’ i.e. situational cues that influence the

offender’s decision to commit crime. These factors or

situational cues would include the visibility of the target,

degree of difficulty apparent to the offender and the

presence or absence of ‘capable guardians’ as described in

the routine activity theory. This ‘crime template’ varies

from individual to individual and from crime to crime as

well as the offenders’ age and experience (Department of

Criminology, 2009a). It does develop with each attempted

criminal action. If an offender is successful in the

commission of a particular offence, the ‘crime template’ for

this type of offence is positively reinforced leading to

repetition of such offence and replication of the crime

patterns. Similarly, any failure during the commission of a

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particular offence or repeated failure leads the offender

either to stop attempting that offence or change the time,

place and modus operandi, thereby altering the ‘crime

template’ for that type of offence. This in turn can affect

the readiness or willingness of the offender to commit that

particular type of offence.

As crime pattern theory explains the specific patterns of

offending in both crime and offenders, it is of vital

importance in crime pattern analysis, which cannot be

carried out without an understanding of crime patterns. The

modern day security and crime risk manager, including a

Security Advisor in the context of UN operations, has to

study crime patterns in his/her area of responsibility and

analyze them before carrying out the Security Risk Analysis

attempting to identify the risks and the Security Risk

Management process aiming at reduction of crime targeted

against UN personnel and properties.

Crime pattern analysis attempts to identify crime patterns

in a particular area, using crime data. According to Cope,

‘crime analysis supports the prevention, reduction and

investigation of crime by providing the police with

information that enables them to prioritise interventions’

(2003: 340). In addition to spatial and temporal

considerations, certain groups and individuals are more

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likely to be victimized or targeted or suffer repeat

offences. For example, men aged 16-24 and single people are

more likely to experience violent crime, while those with no

home security measures and single adult households are more

likely to be a victim of burglary (Povey, Walker and

Kershaw, 2005 as cited in Home Office Strategic Policy Team,

2005). According to Ekblom (1988:4), crime analysis ‘assumes

that crimes cluster in place and/or time, focus on

particular types of property or victims and are committed by

particular range of methods’.

Cope (2003), defined the crime analysis process consisting

of five stages including collection of data, representation

of data, interpretation of data, recommendations for action

and evaluation. It is extremely important to collect data

and information for analysis from different sources and not

to depend solely on official data. Ebklom (1988: 12)

‘identified seven key variables for crime analysts to

consider when representing crime data, which include the

nature of the offence; the location of the offence; the time

it occurred; the method employed; the target chosen and its

characteristics; the victims and their characteristics; and

the social and physical background of the offence’. Other

variables, which could be useful as per need can be used.

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The second stage of representation of data is very important

as it would give an overall picture of the nature and scale

of crime in a particular area. This process is called crime

mapping and there are three main ways of doing it. The

simplest way is to map the incidents on paper.

Alternatively, crime mapping can be done using a computer

graphics software application or using a Geographic

Information System (GIS) (Home Office Direct Communication

Unit, 2005). There are three kinds of crime mapping

techniques, including descriptive mapping, analytical

mapping and interactive mapping. Simple crime maps are made

to reflect spatial, temporal or environmental aspects of

crime in an area and is called descriptive mapping. However,

with the use of computer graphics and GIS, analytical

mapping reflecting examination of more than one variable,

e.g. combined spatial and temporal aspect is possible. GIS

has great potential in criminological research because of

its three key functions, namely database management, spatial

analysis and visualization. Using these three components

collectively provides the capabilities of linking criminal

acts and their multiple characteristics with their

geographical locations and conversely allows association of

the locations of crime with the demographics of the areas in

which they occur (Alexander and Xiang, 1994). Use of GIS

and other computer graphics techniques has made analytical

crime mapping easier leading to Spatial and Temporal

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Analysis of Crime (STAC) as well as ‘Hot Spot analysis’.

STAC analyzes the spatial distribution of crime as a

function of time while ‘Hot Spot analysis’ or ‘Hot Spot

mapping’ is a popular analytical technique that is used to

help identify where to target police and crime reduction

resources after identifying the areas of high concentrations

of crime (Chainey, Tompson and Uhlig, 2008). Interactive

mapping is more sophisticated and involves combination of

both descriptive and analytical mapping. It allows mapping

of time and space variables of crime in addition to other

variables like profiles of potential offenders and their

activities.

The third stage of interpretation of data is where the crime

patterns and distribution of crime can be explained and

understood. This may include both deductive and inductive

methods using spatial, temporal and ecological principles.

The Brantinghams (2008) identified three main forms of crime

analysis. The first is crime occurrence analysis involving a

descriptive mapping out of locations of specified crimes on

a geographical basis. The second is relational / locational

analysis in which analytical mapping of place where crime

occurred is identified and then the relationship between the

location and factors that facilitate the offence are

discerned. The third is ecological analysis involving study

of the relationship between groups of people and the

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territory that they occupy (Department of Criminology,

2009a). Similarly, the analysis can involve studying the

temporal aspects of crime during the day, week, months and

years using time series models.

The fourth stage of crime analysis process involves

recommendations for action based on the review of data and

interpretation from the first three steps. The fifth stage

is evaluation, in which the impact of the action recommended

in the fourth stage is evaluated. In the light of this

evaluation, the recommendations for intervention may be

continued having proved successful or may be modified to

make them more effective.

Crime pattern analysis is extremely useful for security and

crime risk manager as a tool of understanding crime

patterns, analyzing and interpreting crime data. However, it

is strictly a reactive tool as it is based on the

information on criminal events that happened under certain

circumstances and environments in the past. It cannot be

used to accurately predict the relative risk of a crime and

this has to be factored in to any threat and risk assessment

being carried out using this method. Though it provides

information about crime ‘Hot Spots’ and crime distribution,

it provides little insight into the causes of the crime

because unless the crime maps are properly constructed and

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interpreted based on high quality accurate data, they tend

to ignore the geographical features of an area and other

factors that may affect crime levels (Cope, 2003). According

to Ratcliffe (2004),

The broader area of crime mapping and crime

pattern analysis would appear to either be, or on

the verge of becoming, a fundamental tool in the

criminal justice system and in law enforcement

because specific methodologies like spatio-

temporal mapping and geographic profiling provides

the analytical tools that were not previously

available without considerable effort. While crime

analysis still has a long way to go, it is moving

ahead at a quick rate and growing in significance.

(Ratcliffe, 2004:

79, 80)

As described by Bowers, Johnson and Pease (2004), research

is being undertaken on the use of event-based mapping using

GIS techniques, instead of the current area based

retrospective techniques, to be able to more accurately

predict crime in the future.

It would be useful to explain how useful this process of

crime pattern analysis would be for a modern day security

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and crime risk manager, using the UN Security Advisor as an

example. In the context of UN operations, the host country

is primarily responsible for the security of UN personnel,

property and assets. In addition, the UN organization

strives to maintain a world-wide uniform standard of

security in its peacekeeping missions and other duty

stations as a necessary safeguard against the event of host

country security arrangements collapsing or becoming

ineffective owing to armed conflict, civil disturbances or

sudden change of government. These UN general security

arrangements are monitored by the United Nations Department

of Safety and Security (UNDSS) at HQ New York. The personnel

who maintain the general security arrangements at each duty

station and country form the Security Management Team

(Medhurst, 2002).

The UN Security Management System in a country is

coordinated by a Security Advisor, who is responsible for

‘Security Risk Management’, i.e. identification of the

possible threats and risks associated with the various UN

agencies and organizations working in the country and

devising various strategies and policies in order to

minimize such threats and risks to an acceptable level

(United Nations, 2006). The Security Advisor, at the start

of UN operations in a country, has to initially carry out

the security risk assessment of all the proposed offices and

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possible residential locations for UN staff members. A

comprehensive crime pattern analysis has to be carried out

in consultation with local law enforcing agencies. All

possible crime data is collected from official records. In

addition, data regarding prior offences in the area and

crime surveys are also collected from any UN agencies and

INGOs, who are already working in the area or have worked

there in the past. After collection of this data, an

analysis of the crime situation is carried out, to identify

crime ‘Hot Spots’ which must be avoided and comparatively

‘safer’ areas having lower crime rate, which can be used for

offices and residences for the UN staff. Each proposed

office or residence is then inspected and a threat and

vulnerability assessment of the physical features and

location is carried out to identify the strengths and

weaknesses from security point of view. Mitigation or

‘target hardening’ measures are then suggested in order to

minimize the risk level. The process is continued to be

monitored for evaluation, feedback and to adjust in case of

any development affecting the safety and security of the UN

staff (UNDSS, 2009). Hence, the UN Security Advisor follows

the ‘preventive process’ as defined by Ekblom (1986:2,3),

which ‘aims to obtain a clear picture of the nature of the

crime problem, highlight the preventive options and the

choice of strategy, and once these are implemented, to check

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on their impact and evaluate whether these options are

working or need modifications’.

It can be concluded from the above discussion that the

security managers have the enormous task to protect staff

and properties, prevent and minimize losses and are,

therefore, very important in the hierarchy of any

organization. The development of various theories explaining

the occurrence of crime has led to a better understanding of

crime and crime patterns. It has been clearly demonstrated

that the knowledge of crime patterns is of vital importance

to assist the role of a security and crime risk manager in

order to better target resources and interventions and to

devise policies and strategies leading to crime reduction,

detection of offences, prevention of losses, and increasing

the profitability of the organization.

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