Schools as Precipitants of Crime: The Routine Activities and the Sociology of Place

SES 0071124 PI：James P Lynch，Caterina P Gouvis 该项目利用广泛的人口普查数据研究全天针对学童的犯罪变化。 研究区域将是马里兰州的一个大县（约75万居民）。 犯罪受害率来自1992年至1999年6月向警方报告的所有人身犯罪事件。 这项研究的总体目标是评估从犯罪学的一个既定观点得出的假设，称为“日常活动”。“根据这一观点，犯罪率受到机会、监视和环境中行为者组合的重要影响。 迄今为止，评估这一观点的研究一直受到数据库不足的阻碍;潜在犯罪受害者的人数尚不清楚，因此难以评估犯罪率。 利用在校儿童并关注发生在学校的犯罪应该可以解决这个问题，从而导致比以前进行的更干净的假设测试。 这项研究的主要好处将是产生一个很好的测试，这一观点在社会学的越轨行为。 这一观点比个人主义的观点更具结构性，例如，个人主义的观点侧重于犯罪者的特征，而不是社会状况的性质。

SES 0071124PI: James P Lynch, Caterina P Gouvis This project uses extensive Census data to study variations in crimes against school children throughout the day. The area of study will be a large county (about 750,000 residents) in Maryland. Crime victimization rates come from all incidents of person crimes reported to the police from 1992 through June 1999. The overall goal of the research is to assess hypotheses derived from an established perspective in criminology, called "routine activity." According to this view, crime rates are importantly influenced by opportunities, surveillance, and the mix of actors in a setting. To date, studies to assess this perspective have been hampered by inadequate data bases; the number of people who are potential crime victims has not been known, so it is difficult to assess crime rates. Using children enrolled in schools and focusing on crimes that take place at the school should solve that problem, leading to cleaner tests of the hypotheses than have previously been conducted. The main benefit of this research will be to produce a good test of this perspective in the sociology of deviance. This view is considerably more structural than individualistic perspectives, which focus, for instance, on characteristics of perpetrators rather than on properties of social situations.