Research on Offender Decision-Making Utilizing Geo-Narratives

The purpose of this research project is to contextualize neighborhood crime geography as seen through the eyes of ex-offenders, police officers, and community residents. Additionally, a novel method employed by this research, spatial video, will assess the implementation of Crime Prevention through Environmental Design principals; specifically examining the impact of land clearing on the revitalization of neighborhoods. Through the use of geo-narratives, the research will examine the impact of the insights provided by ex-offenders, police officers, and community residents against the method, simply spatial video, to test which should be translated to other environments. The use of these methods will be evaluated against 911 and/or calls-for-service data. The goal of this project is to test: To what degree is there spatial consistency in neighborhood crime insight maps created by ex-offenders with existing crime and 911 call-out data hotspots? How do these perceptions fit with non-offenders and neighborhood police officers? Do these neighborhood crime insight maps reveal environmental signatures that can be translated to other Akron neighborhoods in order to explain and predict crime patterns?
ca/ncf