CJFS 3735 - Communities and Crime

Goals:

Identify theoretical and empirical linkages between community contexts and crime.
Introduce students to data visualization.
Analyze crime and community data.

Content: Why do some communities have more crime than others? What is the relationship between community social conditions and crime? Why do these relationships exist? This course is designed as an exploration into the theoretical and empirical linkages between community contexts (e.g., demographics, use of space, zoning, gentrification, etc.) and crime. The first part of the course will detail criminological theories about communities and crime, as well as survey some of the empirical foundation of these theoretical ideas. The second part of the course will involve an introduction to using, manipulating, visualizing, mapping, and analyzing spatial data in the statistical package R including geocoded crime data, Census Bureau spatial data such as the American Community Survey, police activity data, and other forms of spatial administrative data. The third part of this course will consist of the creation of student projects that involve original analysis of spatial crime and community data of different cities. In this course, students will learn not only approaches to thinking about the relationships between community social conditions and crime, but also valuable skills in handling and analyzing spatial data.

Prerequisite: ECON 1200 or MATH 1200 or QMBE 1310, grade of C- or higher

Credits: 4