Crime

Research is starting to suggest that it is important to include measures of crime in environmental studies. There are three types of police records used in the study of crime and disorder: calls for service; reported crimes; and arrests. All large police agencies collect these data and can supply them in a computer readable form, along with the codes necessary to identify relevant call, crime, and arrest types. Police agencies in study regions may be able to provide the type, date, time, and address for these records. Consultants with expertise in criminology should be sought out to contact the relevant law enforcement agencies and acquire the police records, interpret and stream-line the voluminous service call data, and establish the timeframe over which police records can be obtained. Calls for service, crimes, and arrests can be geocoded and analyzed, providing neighborhood-level and individual household estimates of objective safety.