Crime Prevention and the Science of Where People Are

Abstract

Crime prevention initiatives are often conceptualized working at primary-secondary-tertiary (PST) levels. Primary prevention efforts address the underlying social, economic, and physical environmental conditions that generate crime; secondary prevention efforts focus on people, places, and social conditions that are at high risk of crime; whereas tertiary prevention efforts are directed toward already existing and specific crime problems. This article discusses the uses of the ambient population (a 24-hr average estimate of the population present in a spatial area) to better inform crime prevention initiatives within the PST framework. Though the results indicate the ambient population has utility for all three levels of crime prevention, the most immediate use is in tertiary prevention to better understand the nature of areas with a current crime problem. This information is not available from the resident (or census) population because the resident population indicates where people sleep, not where they are.