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Book Review: Crime and the Urban Environment

This is the latest of what is now almost a series of books by Keith Harrie on the geography of crime. Following his 1974 Geography of crime and justice and his 1978 Geography of laws and justice (the latter with Stanley Brunn), this latest book is closely confined to the geographer's traditional concerns with environ­ ment and there is, in fact, a chapter devoted to physical environment, rather liberally interpreted, and its influences on criminal behaviour. Land-use patterns, weather, Uthium, and phases of the moon are the influences discussed with varying levels of seriousness. The social environment is subdivided into macro and micro with separate chapters on each, though many of the microenvironments discussed are, in fact, at city scale and behavioural studies per se receive limited treatment. Under the heading of macroenvironments some of the well-known correlates of crime rates, including urbanization, density, and interaction are discussed and some new studies are reported. Although the chapter concludes with implications of these researches for policy and planning, it is very doubtful if there are any of significance The microenvironment chapter is almost more of the same and concludes with the identification of five ecological correlates of crime and no surprises. The book begins with a careful assessment of data, measurement and related problems and an over brief discussion of criminological theory; and concludes with a critique of criminal justice planning in the United States. The book sets its own limitations by setting out to review the environments of criminogenesis from a broad ecological perspective. Within these limitations it provides a carefully constructed and up-to-date review of ongoing research. In a sense, however, this kind of review is about the last thing which is needed at present. The questions which geographers need to pursue are not at the ecological scale, nor in that mode of analysis. They need to be much more explicitly concerned with theories which have broader social science bases and they need to examine the other scales of analysis in which much more interesting and relevant answers may lie. Keith Harries has written a useful book which again draws together material and consolidates a perspective. It does not, however, move sufficiently forward to in­ corporate new perspectives and identify new research directions.