Cameron, James Gilbert; PhD
THE PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY, 1999
SOCIOLOGY, CRIMINOLOGY AND PENOLOGY (0627); GEOGRAPHY (0366)
The ecological study of crime has been a topic of interest in criminology for
quite some time and has
been investigated for a wide range of city sizes, types, neighborhood settings,
and points in time.
Virtually all attempts to develop ecological models of crime have nevertheless
overlooked spatial
dependence, spread and heterogeneity in their conceptualizations. The present
study is an attempt to
address this omission through the application of Geographic Information System
(GIS) technologies and
spatial analysis procedures to the study of metropolitan and nonmetropolitan
violent crime patterns in the
United States at the county level for 1977–1996. The principal objectives
of this dissertation are
threefold. The first goal is to apply the exploratory and analytical capabilities
of GIS to a relatively
unexplored area of criminological research-the diffusion of violent crime. A
second objective is to
investigate the extent to which violent crime is spreading from metropolitan
to nonmetropolitan locations
and the degree to which violent crime rates in metropolitan and nonmetropolitan
locations are
converging over time. A third objective is to develop a diffusion model of violent
crime and to examine
various types of diffusion processes—including expansion diffusion,
relocation diffusion, and
hierarchical diffusion—and the specific demographic and spatial mechanisms
through which these
diffusion processes operate with regard to the spread of violent crime. In particular,
these hypothesized
mechanisms include spatial proximity, regional location, size of place, population
growth, population
mobility, population composition (age- and sex-structure), and population diversity.
Social
Systems Simulation Group
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