Human Mobility and Crime: Theoretical Approaches and Novel Data Collection Strategies

Abstract

This review outlines approaches to explanations of crime that incorporate the concept of human mobility—or the patterns of movement throughout space of individuals or populations in the context of everyday routines—with a focus on novel strategies for the collection of geographically referenced data on mobility patterns. We identify three approaches to understanding mobility–crime linkages: ( a) Place and neighborhood approaches characterize local spatial units of analysis of varying size with respect to the intersection in space and time of potential offenders, victims, and guardians; ( b) person-centered approaches emphasize the spatial trajectories of individuals and person–place interactions that influence crime risk; and ( c) ecological network approaches consider links between persons or collectivities based on shared activity locations, capturing influences of broader systems of interconnection on spatial- and individual-level variation in crime. We review data collection strategies for the measurement of mobility across these approaches, considering both the challenges and promise of mobility-based research for criminology.