UCL Department of Security and Crime Science

Crime has an inherent geographical quality – it occurs at a location.  More importantly, it occurs at some types of places (but not others) with regularity. Understanding the role that location plays in the occurrence of crime can offer vital clues about how to prevent crime and how to catch offenders swiftly.

Our primary interest is to improve how geographical analysis is used to understand crime, disorder and anti-social behaviour.  Our interests include the development of geographical analysis techniques to help better understand patterns of victimisation, offender mobility, recidivism and terrorism.  Research also concerns the utility of mapping and spatial technologies for police forces, Community Safety Partnerships (CSPs), and other intelligence/crime reduction professionals.

For details on current research activity please review the PROJECTS page.

Our activities are widely recognised by practitioners and others in the research community.  We host the National Crime Mapping Conference, were the primary authors of the ACPO NPIA Analysis of Geographic Information Workbook, and run numerous GIS-based courses on analytical techniques, including our partnered course with the NPIA on Geographic Profiling Analysis.  Our research has been funded by a number of sponsors including the Home Office (e.g. geographical analysis into stop and search activity, prospective mapping), British Academy (space-time analyses of crime, and insurgency in Iraq), ESRC (mapping prisoner re-entry), and EPSRC (modeling global dynamics – a multidisciplinary project across UCL led by Sir Alan Wilson, CASA).

Staff members involved in these activities also act as consultants for national, local, and overseas initiatives.  This includes our contribution to the ACPO Geographic Information Board, our consultative support to CSPs, and our work with law enforcement agencies in the USA, Canada, Brazil, South Africa, China, Australia and New Zealand. 

Spencer Chainey (Lead)
Dr Shane Johnson
Dr Kate Bowers
Lisa Tompson

Current research activity includes (click on the links for more details on each project):

• Understanding the crime fall: examining changes in crime in the Core Cities
• The utility of hotspot mapping techniques for predicting crime patterns (e.g. thematic mapping of administrative areas, kernel density estimation, Gi*, computer simulation and mathematical models)
• The Trafford Experiment: working with Greater Manchester Police to predict and reduce crime
• Exploring the impact of publishing crime statistics using crime mapping
• The ‘Footprint’ Project: A spatio-temporal analysis of five football stadia in England
• Identifying priority neighbourhoods using the Vulnerable Localities Index
• Incorporating the temporal dimension to geographical analysis
• The development of risk surface mapping by identifying geographical factors that make hotspots attractive (e.g. street network connectivity)
• Understanding the impact of prisoner re-entry (in relation to where an ex-offender resides following release from prison) on their risk of re-offending
• Improving neighbourhood-based community engagement through the use of community intelligence (in partnership with the Universities’ Police Science Institute at Cardiff University)
• The police targeting of stop and search
• Developing and testing models of offender foraging behaviour
• Analysing the evolution of space-time patterns of insurgency