Hot Spots of Crime and Criminal Careers of Places

The explanation of crime has been preoccupied with individuals and communities as units of analysis. Recent work on offender decision making (Cornish and Clarke, 1986), situations (Clarke, 1983, 1992), environments (Brantingham and Brantingham 1981, 1993), routine activities (Cohen and Felson, 1979; Felson, 1994), and the spatial organization of drug dealing in the U.S. suggest a new unit of analysis: places. Crime is concentrated heavily in a Jew "hot spots" of crime (Sherman et aL 1989). The concentration of crime among repeat places is more intensive than it is among repeat offenders (Spelman and Eck, 1989). The components of this concentration are analogous to the components of the criminal careers of persons: onset, desistance, continuance, specialization, and desistance. The theoretical explanationfor variance in these components is also stronger at the level of places than it is for individuals. These facts suggest a need for rethinking theories of crime, as well as a new approach to theorizing about crime for