Crime Places and Place Management

Oxford Handbooks Online

Crime Places and Place Management
Tamara D. Madensen and John E. Eck
The Oxford Handbook of Criminological Theory
Edited by Francis T. Cullen and Pamela Wilcox

Print Publication Date: Nov 2012

Subject: Criminology and Criminal Justice, Communities and Crime, Criminological Theories
Online Publication Date: Dec 2012 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199747238.013.0029

Abstract and Keywords

When asked whether they can predict where crime will occur, most police officers say no.
However, most police officers can identify a particular neighborhood where one can
possibly be mugged. In the first case, the police officers are asked about crime in general
and in an unspecified area, for an undefined purpose. In the second case, they are asked
about the risk of a specific crime in very small areas, for the purposes of prevention.
Specificity is a key factor in crime prevention, and is evident in places which are very
specific geographic locations. This article explores why crime levels are extraordinarily
high in some places but low or totally absent in most places, and how place management
accounts for this disparity. In particular, it reviews empirical studies and associated
theory related to crime at places (that is, addresses, buildings, and land parcels) and the
management of these locations. It also discusses extensions of routine activity theory, as
well as displacement, diffusion of benefits, and neighborhood effects.

Keywords: crime, places, place management, routine activity theory, displacement, diffusion of benefits,
neighborhood effects

Let’s begin with a true short story about one person’s attempt to examine places. About
10 years ago, a young, bright crime analyst was assigned to a police substation in a high-
crime, urban neighborhood. This new analyst wanted desperately to impress his superiors
and prove himself to department veterans. He worked tirelessly each day, running
cutting-edge analyses while taking advantage of the latest advances in Geographic
Information Systems (GIS) software. After several weeks, he asked to speak about his
findings during briefing. Everyone was impressed that an analyst had used modern
technology to generate new intelligence. The analyst was excited and confident that his
efforts were about to pay off.

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Crime Places and Place Management

He stood before his audience at briefing and declared that he had found a major source of
crime in the neighborhood. His analyses determined that one particular intersection was
driving the high level of calls for service. As he showed that this intersection was the
epicenter of much of the serious crime in the area, including shootings, assaults, and
other drug-related crimes, one of the senior officers interrupted, “It’s been like that for
15 years.” The analyst, embarrassed for spending so much time learning about something
that was obviously common knowledge to others, left the briefing feeling defeated and
useless.

When asked the general question, “Can you predict where crime will occur?” most police
officers say no. At first, this may seem an impossible task and a ridiculous question. After
all, if known, something could be done to prevent it. But, if the question is framed more
specifically and pragmatically, “Where could I go tonight to get mugged in this
neighborhood?” most police officers’ predictive abilities improve dramatically. (p. 555)
Most important, an officer’s answer today is likely similar, or even identical, to the
answers of officers working in the area five years ago and officers who will be there five
years from now, barring intervention. The first question asks about crime in general and
in an unspecified area, for an undefined purpose. The second asks about the risk of a
specific crime in very small areas, for the purposes of prevention. Specificity is important
for prevention, and places are very specific geographic locations. The enduring quality of
high-crime places may lead some interested in crime prevention to feel defeated, as our
analyst did during his presentation. However, others—such as police officers motivated to
prevent muggings in a particular place—may see the primary advantage associated with
this phenomenon; we know exactly where to start to significantly reduce criminal
opportunities and overall crime levels.

This chapter examines why some places have extraordinarily high crime levels while most
places have little or no crime, and how place management contributes to this disparity
(see Appendix A—Glossary of Crime-Place Terms and Concepts at the end of this
chapter). In particular, we review empirical studies and associated theory related to
crime at places (i.e., addresses, buildings, and land parcels) and the management of these
locations. Place management is central to understanding why some places are more
crime prone than others and for developing policies to reduce crimes at these locations.
For this reason, extensions of routine activities theory, including the concept of place
management, are of particular interest. Empirical evidence and everyday observations
also point to the importance of place management. When places lack effective managers,
crime is more likely to occur. This explains why fights between students tend to occur
before or after school rather than in the classroom, why bar patrons are more likely to
fight in parking lots than inside the facility, and why items are more often stolen from
front yards and open garages than from inside homes.

As this chapter focuses on the relationship between place management and crime at
proprietary places (defined in the next section), it does not present an exhaustive review
of place-related crime theories. Aggregate-level place theories—from Shaw and McKay
(1942) to Bursik and Grasmick (1993) to Sampson, Raudenbush, and Earls (1997)—are

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Crime Places and Place Management

addressed in Warner and Clubb (this volume). Theories of meso-level places (e.g., street
blocks) are not well developed, largely because research on them is very recent.
However, Weisburd, Groff, and Yang (forthcoming) have developed an interesting
explanation of these places by rescaling social disorganization theories to smaller
geographies.

The main conclusions offered in this review of places are as follows:

• Existing terminology used to define places has not helped to fully explicate place-
crime relationships. Three new terms are offered to provide theoretically meaningful
distinctions among place aggregations: “proprietary,” “proximal,” and “pooled
places” (for definitions, see Appendix A—Glossary of Time-Place Terms and Concepts
at the end of the chapter).
• Research on crime events in proprietary places best helps to explicate the
mechanisms that permit crime to occur. Technological advances now allow
examinations of highly defined spaces (e.g., a single address) and have stimulated new
theoretical developments related to crime and place.
• Crime is highly concentrated in proprietary places and these concentrations
(p. 556)

tend to persist over time. Since the 1980s, research has consistently supported these
propositions. More recent studies have explored the causes of unequal crime
distributions across similar types of facilities.
• Place-focused interventions can reduce crime (1) without significant displacement
and (2) regardless of neighborhood characteristics. Reviews of displacement evidence
suggest that this phenomenon is not inevitable and can rarely justify nonintervention.
While distal neighborhood characteristics are not as influential as proximal or
proprietary place characteristics, understanding the interaction between proprietary
and pooled-place effects can help us develop more effective prevention strategies.
• Place susceptibility to criminal activity is largely determined by place management
practices. Management decisions related to the functioning of places produce
environments that either facilitate or suppress criminal behavior.
• Proprietary place theory, describing physical locations, may be applicable to virtual
places within computer networks.
• Changing crime-facilitating management practices can have a tremendous impact on
crime, and various methods can be used to encourage managers to reduce crime at
their properties. Noncooperative managers may require more coercive interventions,
but place management changes represent one of the most promising approaches to
reducing overall community crime levels.
• Future research should determine how manager roles differ across types of places,
how managers create different types of criminogenic settings, which types of
interventions are most effective at shifting responsibility to managers across these
types of places, and how proprietary places are involved in crime, besides being crime
sites.

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Crime Places and Place Management

We begin in section I by exploring and defining the term “place” for the purpose of this
review. We propose new terminology to more accurately distinguish between the types of
places often conflated in the crime-place literature. Section II provides evidence that
place characteristics determine where crime events occur, and section III examines how
managers influence crime at places. Section IV begins a policy discussion by outlining the
various methods through which place managers can be motivated to reduce crime.
Finally, section V offers policy implications and future directions for crime places and
place management theories. To enhance and preserve conceptual clarity, we provide a
glossary of place terms in Appendix A.

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Crime Places and Place Management

I. What Is a Place?
Place is an ambiguous term. When used, it brings to mind a wide array of locations. If told
that your colleagues have been “someplace” recently, this could mean that they visited a
continent, country, city, neighborhood, street block, a specific address, (p. 557) a building
at that address, a floor in the building, a room on a particular floor, or even a space
within that room. Place also represents various types of Internet locations, like websites
or specific webpages, as well as the devices that connect us with social networking
technologies. These virtual places are just as real as physical ones, and so are their
relationships to crime. Much of what we are learning about physical places can be, with
appropriate modification, applied to virtual places.

Crime studies have conceptualized “place” in a variety of ways. Early studies, such as
those conducted by Chicago School researchers, focused mainly on the characteristics of
aggregate-level places: communities and neighborhoods (Burgess 1925; Thrasher 1927;
Shaw and McKay 1942). These analyses found evidence to support a link between crime
and place. These studies challenged the notion that crime is the manifestation of some
abnormal internal condition of particular individuals. Rather, evidence suggested that
crime is, at least in part, a normal response to unfavorable environmental conditions.
These findings inspired the first modern theories of the geography of crime (e.g., social
disorganization theory). Research over the next several decades consistently confirmed
that some regions, states, cities, and neighborhoods experience higher crime levels than
others and that these places possess characteristics that tend to influence levels of
criminal activity (e.g., high social mobility, low social and economic status, deteriorating
physical conditions).

Today, most researchers agree that place characteristics influence crime. What is left to
debate is the level at which place most directly influences crime. Many previous studies
defined place according to the level of obtainable data (e.g., census blocks or tracts).
However, technological advances have increased our analytic capabilities. These
advances permit examinations of street- and address-level places. The most
comprehensive study of street-level places was undertaken by David Weisburd and
colleagues (2004). Their study of 14 years of Seattle’s almost 30 thousand street
segments showed that crime is highly concentrated at a few segments, and that crime
decreases in Seattle are largely due to improvements in some of these high-crime
segments. More recently, Braga, Hureau, and Papachristos (2011) found that 8 percent of
street segments and intersections produced 66 percent of all street robbery incidents,
and about 1 percent of places produced almost 50 percent of commercial robbery
incidents between 1980 and 2008 in Boston. This finding held even after controlling for
previous robbery levels and trends. Further, places that had the greatest impact on
robbery trends also exhibited relatively stable crime trajectories over time.

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Crime Places and Place Management

While empirical studies find strong relationships between crime and place, the precise
mechanisms through which places influence crime are often unclear. This confusion is
partly attributable to the imprecise nature of the term “place.” As noted previously,
“place” is used to describe diverse types of locations, including addresses, street
segments, and neighborhoods. Using terms like “address,” “street,” or “neighborhood” to
describe places is problematic because they are not grounded in meaningful theoretical
constructs. These terms represent levels at which data can be obtained for analysis but
fail to explicate the reasons that different types of places facilitate or suppress crime.

(p. 558)We propose three new terms to describe places: “proprietary,” “proximal,” and
“pooled.” A proprietary place is an address (physical or virtual), building, or other form of
property parcel. The most meaningful distinction between proprietary and other types of
places is that most proprietary places have distinct owners. Owners are important
because they have legal authority over the functioning of their places. Ownership is
tightly linked to place management, and place management directly influences crime—a
process this chapter addresses in some depth. Sometimes a proprietary place is defined
by a single address (web or street); sometimes it is not (e.g., apartment complexes with
individual building addresses, all web pages on craigslist). The boundaries of proprietary
places are defined by the spatial limits of the owners’ legal authority and responsibility.

Proximal places are small groups of proprietary places clustered relatively close in space
(in the physical world and virtual world). These places contain multiple owners, but no
owner has full control over the entire proximal place. Spatial immediacy may allow one
proprietary place to impact crime at another within a specific proximal place. However,
easily measurable units of analysis do not always produce theoretically meaningful
clusters. A street block or street segment is a clearly defined cluster of proprietary
places, but it may not be very useful for understanding the influence of nearby places on
crime. Let’s look at a simple example.

Figure 29.1 depicts 11

street blocks (A–K). The
bar’s physical address is
located on street block E.
Click to view larger This bar does not offer
Figure 29.1 . Proximal and proprietary places onsite parking, so
customers use the parking
lot located on street block I. Crime at the residential proprietary places located along the
route between the bar and parking lot may be highly influenced by these facilities,
although they are not located on their specific street block. Alternatively, imagine if street
block B was divided to create two small cul-de-sacs, blocking pedestrian movement along
this path. The bar and parking lot would likely influence crime on these street blocks in
very different ways. Bar patrons would no longer travel along the cul-de-sac on the right;
thus, fewer people would stumble across crime opportunities within this residential area.
On the other hand, we might find heavier crime concentrations within the cul-de-sac
closest to the bar if patrons use this as an alternative parking location. Proximal places

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Crime Places and Place Management

matter, but (1) the way in which we define them must depend on context, (2) their crime
levels are influenced by the proprietary places that they contain, and (3) it is possible that
processes at proximal places also account for their crime levels (Weisburd, Groff, and
Yang forthcoming).

Pooled places are higher levels of proprietary place aggregation. The boundaries of such
places are usually selected in a highly arbitrary manner. All that can be said about this
larger collection of proprietary places is that the places within them share some
characteristic that may or may not be relevant for understanding crime within these
areas (e.g., they are all located within the same city, neighborhood, housing tract, or
census block). Crime and place studies using pooled places as units of analysis must
describe the mechanisms that influence crime in these collective places to give meaning
to these aggregations and their boundaries.

The advent of geographic information systems (GIS), wider use of and greater
(p. 559)

familiarity with this technology, more accurate data collection, and greater specification
in crime reports permit us to examine crime incidents using proprietary places as the
geographic units of analysis. Global positioning system (GPS) technology also allows
examinations of crime in highly defined proprietary places, like apartment carports,
boating docks, and specific places within buildings (see, e.g., Rengert, Mattson, and
Henderson 2001). Proprietary place studies have, in turn, encouraged theoretical
advancements to better explain the mechanisms that allow crime to occur. We will
explore the findings of proprietary place analyses and related place-crime theory
developments in the sections that follow.

II. Why Proprietary Places Matter

A. Crime Concentrations

Every urban city suffers from “historical” or “durable” crime hot spots. High-crime places
within cities are commonly used to inform hot spot models. It has been suggested that
using such models to develop place-based interventions offers a more efficient method of
reducing crime than individual-focused interventions due to the stability of crime-place
characteristics (Weisburd 1997; Kennedy, Caplan, and Piza 2010). Proprietary place-based
rather than offender-based interventions may also be more effective because crime
concentrations are higher among particular places than among repeat offenders
(Spelman and Eck 1989). Additionally, we always know where to find these places, in
contrast to victims and offenders; we know more about where a crime occurred (from
police and other government databases); and someone is legally responsible for the place,
namely, the owner.

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Crime Places and Place Management

Crime levels across places tend to be stable partly because the conditions necessary to
facilitate high-crime locations are rare. Perhaps these places are less rare than we wish
them to be, but research confirms that low-crime places are substantially more common.
Places matter precisely because crime is so highly concentrated (p. 560) at a small
number of them. Crime distributions across places follow what is commonly referred to as
the 80–20 rule, which predicts that most of the outcomes are produced by a few things
(Koch 1999). While the precise percentages may vary, the general rule is that a few things
(e.g., places, offenders, targets) are disproportionately involved in generating crime
incidents. Eck, Clarke, and Guerette (2007) note that this type of distribution is
ubiquitous with crime places, is very common when dealing with crime phenomena, and
is seen in a wide variety of social, biological, and physical phenomena.

High-crime places greatly influence overall crime rates. We have already mentioned
findings from Seattle (Weisburd et al. 2004) and Boston (Braga, Hureau, and Papachristos
2011) showing such results at the proximal place level. Crime concentrations at
proprietary places within proximal places also significantly impact overall crime rates.
For example, Sherman, Gartin, and Buerger (1989) found that 50 percent of calls for
police service in Minneapolis came from only 3 percent of the city’s addresses. The
observed crime concentration among addresses was even more pronounced when broken
down by crime type (e.g., all robberies occurred at only 2.2 percent of all addresses).

B. Crime Concentrations within Groups of Facilities

Studies have also focused on crime differences among categories of proprietary places.
Research finds that crime risks at different types of public places, such as high schools,
housing projects, subway stations, and parks, remain relatively consistent over time
(Spelman 1995). Common sense and experience tell us that some types of places are less
crime prone than others (e.g., bakeries versus bars). However, risks across similar types
of places are not equal. Homogeneous sets of proprietary places (e.g., all parking lots)
are called facilities. While risks among different types of facilities can vary, risks among
proprietary place types, representing the same facility, also vary dramatically. Research
demonstrates that a small proportion of facilities produce a large proportion of the crimes
experienced by the entire group (Eck, Clarke, and Guerette 2007). For example, while
bars may be considered a “risky” place to spend time, only a few bars have high levels of
crime, while most experience little to no crime (Madensen and Eck 2008). This
phenomenon is so common that Wilcox and Eck (2011) have called it the “iron law of
troublesome places”: at least 18 different facilities, ranging from bars to places of
worship, have highly skewed distributions, with a few having most of the crime and most
having little or no crime.

Knowing that crime is concentrated at particular proprietary places, and knowing where
these places are, can be particularly useful for crime prevention strategies. If crime is
heavily concentrated at relatively few places, police and community resources can be
focused toward blocking crime opportunities in these locations. Given the substantial

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Crime Places and Place Management

effect that high-crime places have on the general crime rate, we should expect overall
crime levels to decrease substantially if crime is prevented at these locations. Research
has supported this hypothesis. Numerous (p. 561) studies have found that focused police
activities, including directed patrols, can significantly decrease criminal activity in
communities (see Braga 2001, 2005). But relying on police patrols to address high-crime
places makes more sense for proximal places than proprietary places. Fortunately, there
is a large literature showing that there are many practices other than patrolling that work
to reduce crime at proprietary places (e.g., Clarke 1997; Eck 2002; Eck and Guerette
2011).

In summary, research continues to produce strong evidence to suggest that crime is tied
to particular places. It also suggests that these concentrations persist across time at
specific facilities. Today, we know four truths about the relationship between crime and
place: (1) crime is concentrated among proximal and proprietary places, (2) particular
types of crimes are highly concentrated in specific places, (3) these concentrations are
highly stable over time, and (4) concentrations persist even when we look at
homogeneous sets of proprietary places: facilities.

C. Displacement, Diffusion, and Neighborhood Effects

Some believe that suppressing crime at places will merely move the crime to nearby
places. Considerable research disproves this assumption. While displacement is possible,
and crime prevention efforts must be tailored with this potential effect in mind, we now
know that displacement is not an inevitable side effect of place-focused interventions.
Recent evaluations tend to report little evidence of serious displacement. When it does
occur, it usually does so in nearby locations, far fewer incidents occur at displacement
sites, and criminal behavior is typically displaced to less serious forms of offending (Eck
1993; Hesseling 1995; Guerette and Bowers 2009). Crime is concentrated at particular
places for a reason. These places provide unique environments that facilitate high levels
of criminal activity. We should not expect crime to easily move next door, down the street,
or to a different neighborhood since not all places provide equally attractive crime
opportunities. After all, this is why we fail to see a more even distribution of crime across
places to begin with. We will return to this discussion in the next section.

On the other hand, a reduction in crime to nearby locations and targets, also known as a
“diffusion of benefits,” is a more probable outcome of focused prevention efforts (Clarke
and Weisburd 1994; Weisburd et al. 2006; Guerette and Bowers 2009). The common
occurrence of prevention benefits diffusion—from targeted high-crime places to nearby
places where prevention efforts were not focused—suggests something important about
the link between pooled places and smaller places. Diffusion of benefits makes sense if
proprietary and proximal places influence crime in their surroundings. If neighborhood or
pooled-place forces had strong direct influences on crime at proximal and proprietary
places, then suppressing crime at a small place would have little or no impact on its

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Crime Places and Place Management

environment. While more research is needed on this topic, the evidence suggests that
high-crime pooled places are that way because the proprietary and proximal places
within them create the perception of neighborhood-level problems.

High-crime proprietary places are not simply the product of high-crime pooled
(p. 562)

places. Good places exist in bad neighborhoods and bad places exist in good
neighborhoods. Previous research shows that two adjacent, similar facilities can have
very different crime levels (Madensen 2007). For reasons that will be discussed in the
following section, facility location matters, but it matters less than proprietary place
characteristics. This does not mean that pooled-place characteristics are irrelevant.
Pooled-place features may moderate or strengthen the effect of proprietary place
characteristics on crime. For example, target hardening measures and place management
activities are more effective at preventing burglary in neighborhoods with higher
aggregate levels of target hardening, informal social control, and defensible space
features (Wilcox, Madensen, and Tillyer 2007). So, while target hardening at proprietary
places can prevent burglary in all neighborhoods, places in high-crime neighborhoods
may need higher doses of the intervention or a combination of multiple interventions to
achieve the same effect. While not the focus of this chapter, multilevel theories, such as
the dynamic multicontextual criminal opportunity theory proposed by Wilcox, Land, and
Hunt (2003), provide additional insight into these processes (see Wilcox, Gialopsos, and
Land, this volume).

Although crimes may occur with greater frequency in particular neighborhoods, we must
remember that they actually occur at very specific places within these neighborhoods. In
short, proprietary places are only loosely coupled to their contexts: they have internal
mechanisms that allow them to operate mostly independent from their surroundings. This
will vary by facility type (a surface parking lot being more coupled to its surrounding than
a factory, for example) and within facility types (an apartment building with a concierge
and perimeter security may be less sensitive to its context than a garden apartment
complex without a fence or a management representative). The mechanisms that allow
crimes to occur typically function in a highly defined space. These spaces are regulated
by place managers. As such, place managers are responsible for crime at proprietary
places. Their decisions and actions create environments that will ultimately facilitate or
suppress criminal behavior.

III. How Managers Influence Crime at Places

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Crime Places and Place Management

Crime pattern theory (Brantingham and Brantingham 1991; see also Brantingham and
Brantingham, this volume) and routine activities theory (Cohen and Felson 1979) provide
two perspectives that explain why crime is not equally distributed across space. Crime
pattern theory maintains that crimes occur as offenders seize opportunities discovered
while conducting their everyday activities. This explains why crime concentrations are
highest in and around places that attract or house offenders. While crime pattern theory
explains how opportunities are discovered by offenders as they move about, routine
activities theory explains why opportunities (p. 563) exist at a specific place. In terms of
place, it explains why offenders are able to commit crime in some locations but not
others. After all, as the concentration studies cited earlier demonstrate, offenders do not
commit crimes at every location that falls within their activity spaces. Routine activities
theory provides the most useful and empirically supported model for understanding why
this is true.

A. Routine Activity Theory and Place Management

Routine activity theory was developed by Cohen and Felson (1979) in an attempt to
explain the rising crime rate in the United States during a period of improving social and
economic conditions (see Madero-Hernandez and Fisher, this volume). They hypothesized
that more criminal opportunities were created as a result of these improved conditions.
More motivated offenders were encountering unguarded suitable targets as they
conducted their daily routine activities (e.g., greater female participation in universities
and the workplace left homes vulnerable to burglary). The importance of place is implied
to some degree in this early model since victims and offenders must meet in time and
space in order for a crime to occur (Cohen and Felson 1979; Felson 1986). However, an
explicit discussion of the relationship between crime and place was not proposed until
Eck’s (1994) study of drug-dealing places. A systematic comparison of proprietary places,
on the same block, used and not used for drug dealing, revealed that drug dealers were
selecting proprietary places based on their characteristics. Of particular interest was the
size of the apartment building—smaller being preferable. Eck conjectured that owners of
smaller buildings exerted less control over their proprietary places than owners of larger
buildings. Later, in a randomized controlled study, he demonstrated that intervening with
apartment owners created large significant crime reduction effects at drug places (Eck
and Wartell 1998), thus confirming the hypothesis (see table 29.1).

Table 29.1 How place managers differ from other controllers

Manager Guardian Handler

Definition The owner of a A person who A person emotionally

place or the protects another connected to a potential
person or thing from offender and who keeps

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Crime Places and Place Management

representative of theft, attack, or that person out of

the owner damage trouble

Examples Bar owner, life Security guard, Parent, coach, sibling

guard, airline friend, neighbor
attendant, janitor

Interest The functioning of Protecting the Keep offender from

the place target (person or committing crime
thing)

Eck (1994) developed the

“place manager” concept
to describe individuals
who are responsible for
monitoring and controlling
behavior at specific places.
This term was also created
to distinguish people who
control proprietary places
from other types of crime
controllers, such as
Click to view larger
guardians and handlers.
Figure 29.2 . The crime triangle
Guardians and handlers
can prevent crime by
protecting targets and controlling offenders, respectively, but they do not control places
(see also Felson 1995; Clarke and Eck 2005). The current model of routine activities
theory can be conceptualized as the double-layered triangle, also known as the “crime
triangle,” depicted in figure 29.2 (Eck 1994, 2003). In order for any crime to occur, all
“elements” of the inner layer must be simultaneously present at a time when all
“controllers” in the outer layer are weak or absent. Since only one effective controller is
enough to prevent a crime event, it is easy to see why place managers play a critical role
in preventing crime at places.

This extension of routine activities theory has helped draw attention to the link between
proprietary places, place management, and crime. Note that place management applies
only to proximal places when an owner possesses all the property on the street segment
(e.g., a street through a large apartment complex containing multiple buildings), and it
never applies to pooled places. Subsequent research and proposed (p. 564) theoretical
processes have further specified various categories of place managers, as well as their
functions and the mechanisms through which they control crime at places.

B. Levels of Place Management

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Felson (1995) has identified four levels of place managers: personal, assigned, diffuse,
and general. Place managers with “personal” responsibility are the owners of properties.
These individuals, businesses, or government agencies are ultimately responsible for the
activities that occur at their proprietary places. They have the greatest degree of control
over what does and what does not occur at places. Importantly, they have legal authority
and property rights to the place that give them powers no one else has. Place managers
with “assigned” responsibility are employees specifically tasked with regulating behavior
at a location. Personal managers delegate some of their powers to assigned managers.
Security guards and loss prevention staff represent this type of manager. Place managers
with “diffuse” responsibility are other employees who work at a proprietary place. They
too gain their authority (p. 565) through delegation, but they differ from assigned
managers in their work assignments, which typically do not include controlling the
behaviors of others. A stockroom worker, maintenance staff, and housekeeping personnel
can act as diffuse managers. Place managers with “general” responsibility are customers,
by-standers, or other citizens who visit places during the course of their routine activities.
They have no delegated authority to act, and are not expected to act, but may do so
voluntarily.

Crime can be discouraged by all of these managers. A stockroom worker could stop
another employee from pilfering merchandise. A customer may stop another customer
from shoplifting (see table 29.2). However, personal place managers have greater power
and interest in controlling behaviors at their places than the others. It is useful to
consider the ways in which their management decisions impact crime. Recent theoretical
developments have described the ways in which managers create or block crime
opportunities and outlined the specific processes of place management.

Table 29.2 Levels of place management at two different facility types

Manager Bar Apartment

Personal Owners, Bar owner hires bouncer Landlord installs fencing, lighting,
Family, Friends and requires bartenders and security cameras, and hires a
to attend “server security patrol and maintenance
training” firm

Assigned Bouncer ejects fighting Security patrol breaks up a loud

Employees with patrons and bans them party and reports incident to the
specific from reentry owner
assignments

Diffuse Employees Server stops providing Maintenance worker discovers

with general alcohol to overly break in the fence where thieves
assignment intoxicated patrons could enter property

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Crime Places and Place Management

General Strangers, Bar musician calms two Renter stops kids from
other citizens drunken patrons having a vandalizing the community center
dispute over a woman and pool

Source: Adapted from Felson (1995).

C. Place Management Activities in High-Crime Places

Place managers influence crime at proprietary places through their authority to control
their properties. A place manager can create a crime hot spot in three ways. Managers
create crime opportunities by failing to protect vulnerable targets, attracting potential
offenders, or failing to effectively control people’s behavior (Brantingham and
Brantingham 1995; Clarke and Eck 2005). Let us look at each of these management
failures and how they create different types of high-crime places.

First, place managers may facilitate crime by creating a “crime generator.” Crime
generators are locations that offer a large number of attractive targets or bring large
numbers of people together. For example, large shopping malls offer (p. 566) desirable
merchandise, attract large numbers of customers, and subsequently increase
opportunities for offenders and targets to come together in time and space. These types
of proprietary places require manager intervention to reduce crime opportunities and
prevent the location from becoming a crime hot spot (e.g., patrol parking lots, use closed
circuit television cameras, install electronic article surveillance tags on merchandise).

Second, managers may design proprietary places that function as “crime attractors.” The
characteristics of these places attract a disproportionate number of offenders to the
location. Nightclubs that permit drug use, unsecured apartment buildings, and
convenience stores that facilitate open-air drug markets often attract motivated
offenders. These locations will likely suffer from high levels of crime simply based on the
type of clientele or user that management attracts.

Third, managers can create proprietary places that function as “crime enablers.”
Managers in these places fail to set appropriate behavioral expectations, enforce rules of
conduct, or provide guardians or handlers to prevent misconduct. Crime incidents are
more likely to occur in these places due to lax regulation of conduct. Examples of crime
enabler locations include school hallways where unsupervised children bully others,
college fraternity or sorority houses, and sports stadiums that fail to regulate alcohol
sales.

It is important to consider that the primary focus of most place managers is not crime
control. School principals aim to provide high-quality education, bar and apartment
owners want to increase profit margins, and shopping mall owners attempt to increase
the number of customers who visit their leased storefronts. Most everyday activities of

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Crime Places and Place Management

place managers may seem unrelated to crime prevention. However, locations that
function as crime generators, attractors, and enablers are formed as a direct result of
place management processes.

D. The Process of Place Management

Place management is a set of four processes that owners, their employees, and others use
to organize a location’s physical and social environment (Madensen 2007). These
processes are the following:

1. Organize space—the organization and design of the space or location, including

location selection, construction, repair, and upkeep.
2. Regulate conduct—the promotion and prohibition of activities, including activities
that are sought after and those that are undesirable.
3. Control access—the inclusion and exclusion of individuals or groups of people.
4. Acquire resources—the acquisition of money and other resources that can be used
to carry out processes 1 through 3, as well as to generate profit.

These four processes (ORCA) can be used separately or in combination so that everyday
place functions can be carried out. Theory and research demonstrate that decisions made
as a function of carrying out these processes often directly or (p. 567) indirectly influence
crime at places. Because personal place managers have legal authority over their spaces,
almost any form of crime prevention at their place must be approved by them. Thus
situational crime prevention (Clarke 1983), crime prevention through environmental
design (Crowe 2000), and defensible space (Newman 1973) can only be enacted at places
with the cooperation of place managers. They are the linchpin of most crime prevention
at places.

E. How Management Decisions Create or Suppress Crime

Opportunities

Research has shown that the characteristics of places, both social and physical, most
strongly influence offender perceptions of crime opportunities (Clarke 1983, 1997; Miethe
and Meier 1994; Sacco and Kennedy 1998). These place characteristics are a direct
consequence of manager decision making. As argued previously, decisions are made to
carry out one or more of four place management processes. Crime can be an unintended
side effect of these decisions.

Table 29.3 provides examples of manager decisions related to each of the four processes.
In addition, the table provides examples of how the outcomes of these choices might
manifest themselves in both physical and virtual environments. Specifically, the outcomes
of decisions related to picking a business theme, establishing a conduct code, forgoing
access restrictions, and charging for services are presented for both types of

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Crime Places and Place Management

environments. We can anticipate how these decisions may create or suppress crime
opportunities.

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Crime Places and Place Management

Table 29.3 Place manager decisions

Organize Space Regulate Conduct Control Access Acquire Resources

Manager Decision Pick a business theme Establish conduct code No restrictions or Charge for services
entrance fees

Physical Manifestation Biker bar Signs posted at No age restrictions Sell alcohol
entrance

Virtual Manifestation Motorcycle enthusiast Site agreement before Open, unsecured site Sell memberships for
site entering more services

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Crime Places and Place Management

For example, biker-themed businesses will tend to attract bikers, some of whom may be
involved in criminal biker organizations. This decision may create a “crime attractor”
location. The decision to establish a code of conduct may have a crime suppression effect.
Rule setting can reduce the likelihood that the place will become a “crime enabler,”
assuming that the rules are enforced. However, failing to establish any type of access
control could prove problematic. For example, failure to exclude young persons from the
bar means that they will be exposed to older adult strangers and have greater
opportunity to gain access to alcohol, both of which could increase (p. 568) their
likelihood of victimization. Also, the decision to run an open and unsecure website could
expose users to higher risks of identity theft, particularly those who use their credit cards
to purchase memberships on the site. These decisions related to access control may
produce “crime generator” places.

This theoretical exercise illustrates the impact of place manager decision making on
crime. It is important to note that these decisions are made as a function of creating and
maintaining a business; the criminal implications are often a secondary concern.
However, these decisions can dramatically alter the opportunity structure for crime at
proprietary places. The outcomes of these choices can increase or decrease the
attractiveness of criminal behavior at a given location, thus impacting crime levels within
proximal and pooled places. Following the basic tenets of situational crime prevention, we
should expect management decisions that directly or indirectly increase effort and risk,
decrease rewards and provocations, or remove excuses associated with criminal behavior
to have a crime suppression effect (Cornish and Clarke 2003).

IV. Place-Crime Policy Options That Leverage

Place Managers
Research has shown that changes in place management strategies can significantly
reduce crime at places. Two systematic reviews of place-focused interventions found that
interventions targeting the owners of apartments with drug dealing were highly
successful at reducing crime, and similar successes were found when bar managers were
pressured into changing their business strategies (Eck 2002; Eck and Guerette 2011). A
systematic review of international evaluation literature also found strong evidence to
suggest that place owner interventions can produce significant drug and violent crime
reduction (Mazerolle and Ransley 2006a).

A review of recent crime reduction projects presented at the annual Problem-Oriented

Policing conferences provides further evidence of the influence of place management
decisions on crime. For example, a crime reduction project in Dayton, Ohio, reduced high
levels of disorder, crime, and fear at a regional transit center by altering location
management. A variety of interventions were implemented, including a movement
predictor system to allow security to better detect trespassing and loitering. The center

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Crime Places and Place Management

was also redesigned to enhance the location’s image and increase natural surveillance
(Dayton Police Department 2010). In the United Kingdom, bar managers were
encouraged to use glass alternatives to reduce injuries at their places. Between 2007 and
2009, glass-related injuries were eliminated and calls for police service were reduced by
more than 36 percent (Lancashire Constabulary 2010). In Chula Vista, California, police
shifted responsibility for crime and disorder to motel owners by requiring them to obtain
permits to operate in the city. These permits could be denied if excessive calls for service
were generated at their (p. 569) properties. The managers developed their own “industry
standards” to comply with the new permit requirements (e.g., screening guests/visitors,
maintaining access control, adding security, posting/enforcing rules). These management
changes reduced crime at motels by 70 percent and reduced the time officers spent at
these locations by more than 1,200 hours per year (Chula Vista Police Department 2009).

As these examples show, police are increasingly looking beyond patrolling hot spots as a
response to persistent crime places and focusing on place managers instead. Further
examples of practices aligned with this approach are noteworthy. Landlord training to
help property owners keep drug dealers from using their apartment buildings, for
instance, developed in the late 1980s (Campbell 1989). Civil legal action to force property
owners to stop drug dealing also began during this time (Cadwalader, Wickersham, and
Taft 1993). Within the problem-oriented policing movement, increasing attention has been
focused on how to get those who facilitate crime conditions to take up the burden of
policing, thus shifting responsibility from the police (Scott 2005). To promote
responsibility shifting, Herman Goldstein developed a hierarchy of management-focused
interventions, ranging from passive requests to civil proceedings (Clarke and Eck 2005).

Focusing on proprietary places and their management opens up a host of interventions

heretofore unexamined. We have summarized the evidence that crime is concentrated at
a relatively few places and the evidence that intervening with owners of these places can
reduce crime. So, place managers can exercise control over their locations to prevent
crime. Further, this does not usually displace crime and may even reduce crime in
surrounding proximal and pooled places. This suggests that we can treat crime places as
crime polluters (Farrell and Roman 2006). It may be possible to regulate places in much
the same way that governments regulate polluters. Nonmarket regulations impose
requirements on places; the most obvious extant examples are regulations of bars to
prevent overdrinking, serving to minors, and fights; bank regulations to protect against
fraud; and airport regulations to prevent the hi-jacking of aircraft. Subsidies of
prevention are also possible—police provision of landlord training to prevent drug dealing
is an example. But there are also market mechanisms that can be applied.

Market mechanisms focus less on the means of prevention than on the ends. They
differentially impact the costs of production among competing firms and thereby reward
low-crime producing places relative to high-crime producing places (Freedman and
Kolstad 2007). Liability for crime is one form of market mechanism as the occurrence of
serious crimes increases the risk of a penalty imposed through the courts (Segerson
2007). Civil enforcement to reduce crime is sometimes referred to as third-party policing

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(Mazerolle and Ransley 2006b). The Chula Vista example, mentioned earlier, used
another market mechanism, performance standards linked to fines. This market
mechanism requires places to pay a fee, tax, or fine for every crime over a defined limit,
thus giving an incentive to reduce crime, if the fee, tax, or fine is high enough.

Another increasingly common pollution regulatory instrument has never been used to
reduce crime at places, though it appears suitable in principle. That is the use of (p. 570)
cap and trade (OECD 2001; Eck and Eck 2011). Absent an extant example, we will use a
hypothetical scenario. Imagine a city with a large number of private parking lots, most of
which have few or no thefts from vehicles but a few of which have most of these crimes.
The city could place a cap on the total volume of thefts from vehicles in all these lots such
that the cap is substantially lower than the existing crime level. The city issues lot
permits for this capped level of crime and prohibits lots from having thefts from vehicles
in excess of their permits. Owners of lots with few crimes can sell their permits to owners
of lots with many crimes. This gives an incentive for owners to lower crime in lots so they
can sell their excess permits for a profit. Evidence from pollution control suggests that
this is a very promising approach (Stavin 2007), but whether it will help reduce crime
cannot be determined until it has been experimentally tested.

V. New Directions for Place-Crime Theory

This chapter has examined the literature on crime places and place management. We
have seen that the concept of place has become highly ambiguous, so we have
differentiated among three ways place is used in the crime literature: proprietary,
proximal, and pooled. Our focus has been on proprietary places, and only secondarily on
proximal places. Crime is highly concentrated at proprietary places. A major reason for
this is the activities of place managers: most act in ways that suppress crime but a few
owners act in ways that fail to discourage crime and might even excite crime. A growing
body of evidence shows that interventions at high-crime proprietary places can reduce
crime without substantial risk of displacement. In fact, there is considerable evidence
that prevention benefits diffuse out to improve the local environment of treated places. A
variety of policy options, beyond focused policing (Weisburd and Eck 2004), can be used
to address high-crime proprietary places, though more evaluations are needed to
determine which work best under particular circumstances.

The proprietary places we have discussed have all been crime sites. Do proprietary places
have other roles in crime—roles that do not necessarily involve being locations of crime?
Recent advances in place theory suggest that there are other types of proprietary places
that need to be examined. Further, all of these places may have a virtual equivalent. Table
29.4 provides an outline of a classification of places: physical and virtual. We have
discussed physical crime sites at great length. An example of a virtual crime site is a

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pornography website that routinely steals personal identification information from

visitors or infects their computers with viruses.

Table 29.4 CS4—variety of crime-involved proprietary places

Physical Description Example Virtual version

Crime Sites An address, building, A high-crime A website that

or land parcel with a convenience store routinely corrupts
great deal of crime computers that link
to it

Convergent A place where A transit hub A website where

Settings potential offenders offenders can
routinely meet exchange
information

Comfort A place offenders use An offender rents an A protected private

Spaces as a safe house, stash apartment and uses website only
site, or for private it as a club house particular offenders
meetings for other members can access
of his group

Corrupt A place that promotes A metal recycling A server that

Spots crime at other places business controls illicit
activity at other
websites

Marcus Felson (2003) identified another type of place: convergent settings. Convergent
settings bring people together. The importance for crime is that these (p. 571) settings
could be locations where offenders meet. Felson suggests that such places are useful for
recruiting members to gangs. Websites and chat rooms can serve similar purposes on the
Internet.

The idea for comfort space comes from Sergeant Matthew Hammer of the Cincinnati
Police Department. He suggests that offenders often use specific locations as social
hangouts, as hiding places to stash drugs and weapons, and as private party locations.
Offenders seek to keep these locations hidden from police so they avoid criminal activities
at these locations, but they situate them near areas where they commit crimes. Osama
bin Laden’s safehouse in Abbottabad, Pakistan, is a dramatic example of a comfort space
(Hammer 2011). Password-protected websites can serve similar purposes.

Finally, consider corrupt spots. These places directly foster crime at other places. A metal
recycling business can serve as such a proprietary place if it encourages offenders to
break into buildings to steal copper piping and other metals. As is the case with comfort
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space, offenders at corrupt spots prefer to keep them hidden from police, so these will
not show up as crime places on crime maps. A website that offers cash to hackers for
credit card data stolen from other sites is an example of a virtual corrupt spot.

The crime analyst, whose story we told at the beginning of this chapter, had to deal with
colleagues who did not see the potential of examining proprietary places. The research
and theory we have reviewed has shown that the analyst’s excitement was well founded.
Proprietary places and place management open up a wide area of theory, research, and
practice. The role of property ownership has received almost no attention in
criminological theory, despite the fact that Shaw and McKay pointed to the role of place
owners decades ago:

As the city grows, the areas of commerce and light industry near the
(p. 572)

center encroach upon areas used for residential purposes. The dwellings in such
areas, often already undesirable because of age, are allowed to deteriorate when
such invasion threatens or actually occurs, as further investment in them is
unprofitable. These residences are permitted to yield whatever return can be
secured in their dilapidated condition, often in total disregard for the housing
laws, until they are demolished to make way for new industrial and commercial
structures. Even if invasion has not taken place, these processes are evident when
the area is zoned for purposes other than residence. (Shaw and McKay 1942, p.
20)

Jon Snodgrass (1976, p. 10), in his biographical article on Shaw and McKay, stated:

The transitional zone, Shaw and McKay noted, came about through the expansion
of the central business district. Owners of land and property in the interstitial area
retained ownership knowing that land values would go up and that eventually
wealthy enterprises would pay handsome prices for the territory as more and
more of it was required for expansion. They refrained from making new
investments in construction and refused to make “wasteful” repairs on the
property since the buildings would be demolished sooner or later to make way for
the expansion. Land values remained high, but property rentals stayed
comparatively low.

It is a small step from these observations to a recognition that ownership of property

matters because ownership conveys the power to manage the location. Why
criminologists failed to pursue this lead pointing to the culpability of some place owners
in creating conditions suitable for crime is unclear, though Snodgrass (1976) suggests
that Shaw and McKay were reluctant to take this step because they were funded by
businessmen who would not have taken kindly to this line of inquiry.

It is time criminologists look more carefully at who owns what and how owners manage
their places. Research in the last two decades has demonstrated that there are many
lessons to be learned from following this path. Understanding how place managers
respond to crime, where we should expect place management to matter, what types of

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management activities matter more than others, what factors influence place
management decisions, how place managers are networked, and how best to encourage
change in place management practices are topics that need considerable research.
Almost all prevention policies at the place level must take into account the interests of
place managers, including all prevention efforts designed to change the physical setting
and many that alter the social setting. The first three activities in ORCA focus on these
settings. A focus on place management means there are many more opportunities to
prevent crime at places than simple reliance on police patrols. Regulatory actions have
received only the most basic examination by researchers, and there is a host of regulatory
policies that have not been attempted, let alone evaluated. In short, (p. 573) place
ownership matters, and theorizing and studying crime places have great practical and
academic potential.

Acknowledgments
We thank Patrick Baldwin, Emily B. Eck, Sgt. Matthew Hammer, Scott Jacques, and
Darwin Morgan for their considerable help with producing this chapter.

Appendix A—Glossary of Crime-Place Terms

and Concepts
Place research and theory has expanded over the last 20 years. In the process, concepts
that were once clear have become ambiguous. This glossary serves the purpose of
providing some relatively specific definitions to improve the clarity of future research and
theory.

Facility—a member of a homogeneous set of proprietary places. A facility may be located

adjacent to others in its set, but typically members of the set are dispersed within pooled
places.

Place management—the activities of a proprietary place manager. The four types of

activities, collectively referred to as ORCA, are these:

1. Organizing space—including site location, construction, renovation, and interior

design;

2. Regulating conduct—including creating and enforcing rules, promoting particular

activities, and discouraging other activities;

3. Controlling access—including enticing preferred place users, discouraging other users,

and advertising; and

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4. Acquiring resources—including generating revenue (businesses), finding donors

(nongovernmental organizations), or obtaining a budget allocation (governmental
agencies).

Place manager—the owner of a proprietary place, the owner’s employees, and

occasionally volunteers or others. Place managers have legal authority over the place.
Their interest is principally in the functioning of their place. Though they may provide
guardianship, this is only one of many instruments they use (see place management).
Unlike guardians, place managers may not be concerned about crime if it does not
impede place functioning. Following Felson (1995), place managers may be personal,
assigned, diffuse, or general, though their powers typically decline from personal to
general.

Pooled place—a contiguous cluster of proximal places comprising a community,

neighborhood, police beat or district, or another large spatial aggregation. These places
are the domain of social disorganization and other aggregate-level place theories. Crime-
facilitating place management practices at one proprietary place are unlikely to affect a
large number of proprietary places within the pooled place, although they could
substantially influence the overall crime level of the pooled place.

Proprietary place—a place defined by ownership boundaries. Proprietary places

(p. 574)

have specific functions. All proprietary place functions are defined by the place’s owner.
Place management applies here. Place management, or the ORCA processes, are used to
preserve and extend the function of the place. There are four ways in which proprietary
places can be involved in crime. They may serve as crime sites, convergent settings,
comfort spaces, or corrupt spots. These are defined in Table 29.4.

Proximal place—a small collection of proprietary places that influence each other through
close spatial proximity. These are often defined in research as street segments—linear
aggregations of contiguous proprietary places. Consequently, proximal places contain
multiple owners or place managers with individual interests and management practices.
The proximal place may be comprised of a homogeneous set of proprietary places (e.g.,
all restaurants or all single-family detached homes) or contain a diverse set of proprietary
places (shops, residents, bars, and parking interspersed along a street or adjacent street
segments). Crime-facilitating place management practices at one proprietary place can
potentially impact crime at others within the proximal place.

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Crime Places and Place Management

Tamara D. Madensen

Tamara D. Madensen is Associate Professor in the Department of Criminal Justice at

the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Her research interests are problem-oriented
policing, crime opportunity structures, place management, and crowd violence.

John E. Eck

John E. Eck is Professor of Criminal Justice at the University of Cincinnati. His work
encompasses investigations management, problem-oriented policing, and preventing
crime at high crime places, focusing on practical solutions to crime problems based
on sound research and rigorous theory.

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