LPRC - CrimeScience – The Weekly Review – Episode 199

Episode Date: January 31, 2025

This week our host discusses the latest in LPRC news, research, visitors, and events! In this episode, our host discusses Environmental Criminology concepts and their application to the retail space, the growth of the SaferPlaces Initiatives, how to navigate and identify risk factors in a location, and so much more. Listen in to stay updated on hot topics in the industry and more!

Hi everyone, and welcome to Crime Science. In this podcast, we explore the science of crime and the practical application of this science for loss prevention and asset protection practitioners, as well as other professionals. Welcome everybody to another episode of Crime Science podcast. This is the latest in our weekly update series from the LPRC and the University of Florida. And I want to talk a little bit about some of our focus, what we're working on and whether we're talking about crime mapping, we're talking about individual place

protection or a group of retailers clustered together, collective efficacy, we call it of course, or think of a business neighborhood watch. In every case, we want to look at what's going on at that place and what's going on with that cluster around that place of individuals. So in our field of criminology and that's environmental criminology again, that's where we focus primarily on shaping the best that we can, the physical built cultural environment at a place and immediately around that place.

So think zones one, two, three, which is the place. Four is the parking area, that proximate area. And then of course, five is the parking area, that proximate area. And then of course five is the surrounding center, neighborhood, and working outward to the whole community and beyond. So when we think about it, we think about risky places and risky people. And so we're looking for clusters of issues in place and time. And so starting with risky places, because crime in place is the major emphasis

with environmental criminologists, typically it takes risky people though, to fill in the blanks too. They're the ones that are taking the action, but particularly as is the case with risky places, a very small percentage of addresses of block segments and blocks within a neighborhood and neighborhoods within a community and communities within a state and so on account for the majority of the problems, the majority of the crime attempts, the victimization. So we would look

at those places first and foremost because we're trying to understand why is this place victimized more than another place and why are the crime attempts, the victimization going on there of this type or multiple types, right? We're looking at mono crime and we're looking at poly crime. In other words, is this place had a series of armed robberies, but no other real documented issues. Another place may have robberies, but may also be experiencing burglaries and vandalism and loitering and harassment and ongoing shoplifting and so on. So it's a poly crime site. So these things do make a difference. The distinctions do make that kind of difference to understand risky places. So it's the characteristics of a place. I know some of this has been covered in the past, but it's so vital. It's vital for a practitioner, law enforcement, retailer alike, for that store manager

to understand for the LP and our AP support that they get to understand what's going on at that place, how vulnerable are they to the given risk level, the threat level around them. And the threat level, the risk level goes up the more other places are clustered around them that bring desirable pedestrian targets bring and that attracts more criminal offenders.

And so the characteristics of that place can include the attractiveness of that place. It's the merchandise you carry, how accessible key merchandise is. Furniture stores may not have as much of an issue because their products may not be readily converted to cash. They're not portable generally, most of the items in the store. And so the effort is much greater to steal from there.

So those places don't tend to have as much crime. They don't generate crime there and they don't generate crime for their neighbors. But if we now have a convenience store that has a lot of people coming and going, particularly at late hours, it may carry alcohol, cigarettes in some cases, and other high-risk high-theft items, energy drinks, for example, those places increase victimization for that place because of those characteristics, but also that radiates, that also moves over to cover other areas.

So that furniture store now may be, or maybe just their parking area is a riskier place for visitors, shoppers, for employees, and delivery people and so on, because of what's around them. Now maybe there's a liquor store or a bar also co-located and so on. So again, it's the cluster of risky places

that create risk and threat levels for their neighbors. So the more of those places, and again, if you look at risk trade modeling by Professor Joel Kaplan and others at Rutgers So the more of those places, and again, if you look at risk trade modeling by Professor Joel Kaplan and others at Rutgers and Dr. Grant Drawe and all kind of fantastic criminologists that have done a whole lot of good work in this area and continue to do so through vital research

showing the dynamics of risky places. And there's some fantastic reading material, journal articles that we read all the time and a lot of great books that have come out about crime and place to understand those dynamics of place and time. So risky places is so important. We talk about how permeable the parking area is, how easy to get into and get out of parking lot A versus parking lot B. If you can get away quickly in parking lot A, comparative parking lot B, that may be a riskier place. That place may be victimized more readily because they not only, let's say, have very

attractive items, they also are a quick getaway. And then you combine that. They have high display fixtures, few employees or the employees are always busy or the employees don't seem to notice or care or take any kind of action, not necessarily obviously restraining or detaining, but at least reporting and trying to serve and things like that. So the dynamics are somewhat complex,

but a ton of common sense comes into play here and understanding why one place is riskier than in other places, because it's the relative attraction or attractiveness of that place, the relative vulnerability to crime of that place as well. And then it's where that place as well. And then it's where that place is co-located with others. And then again, the permeability of the parking lot,

but also by the way, the permeability of the building, the more entry and exit points in the actual structure, not just the parking lot, the more that can impact the riskiness of that place. It's just easier. It's got the good stuff. It's easy to get into and out of. It's easy to conceal your behavior.

You're less likely to be reported. All those factors can each play a role and explain what we call the variance between a high, medium, or say low loss location. In addition to what other places are co-located, how close are they to you? Also, by the way, think of mass transit stops. Your distance from a limited access highway, high-speed escape place, or you have multiple high-speed escape routes.

You have two roads that you can get away from store A and only one from store B that you can move quickly. So it's a lot to think about, but that's what we do in crime and loss control is think about these things. The next part in addition to victimization sites, risky places, is risky people? In understanding what are their intentions, some have an intent to just steal. Some have an intent to do much worse than stealing or while they're stealing. In and so on, their travel and attack methods may vary.

Some will only attack close to where they reside in their activity and their awareness spaces. Activity space again, is the area that they move through to eat and recreate sleep and whatever they're doing, sometimes working as well to stealing or otherwise victimizing and harming. The awareness spaces as a subset, think about if you, you know, four square blocks around where you live,

that's an area you may mostly move through to work and shop and recreate and so on. But you only have a good awareness of part of that area. The actual roadways, maybe if you look left and right, certain areas, certain depths from the road, places you may get out and move around in, places you've heard about or seen some other way. So the awareness space is a smaller subset

of your activity space. And if there's a desirable risky place for that risky offender, that risky person, that place is more likely to be hit than another place. There may be really attractive and vulnerable places in their activity space, but they're not aware of it. Or they don't have enough information in their mind to know how good is it, how vulnerable is it,

how attractive, how vulnerable, and how quickly can they get away? But this place, they know those things. They know it better and they feel more comfortable. And that's why we look at repeat victimization so much. Why do some places are repeatedly hit by offenders, other places rarely or never, and they may be close by. And so this is part of us trying to understand,

explain and leverage all this information, by the way, right, to create safer places and try and identify, work with our law enforcement and other retailer partners to neutralize, if you will, the risky people, the high impact, high rate offenders, getting good evidence on them for an individual crime, and even better, really good evidence on multiple crimes tied to that individual and that crew if they're part of a crew of offenders. And so, you know, risky people isn't as important. They're traveling to attack. How far away do they travel to attack? You know, there are trappers that people come to them. Think Bates Motel, where their victims come to their place, or daycare center, where you've

got a bad person, the victims might come to them, the trapper. But you're going to have hunters and others that go out in a small area, a large area, or maybe in good other cities. So we don't want to go too much into that right now, but the point is that's something to think about. Do they attack alone? And by attack, that could be any theft, fraud, or violence, or combination of those when we talk about attack. So this is what we're talking about with risky people. Where are those clusters and connections? So a place is riskier for the reasons we talked about.

What's it do? How's it do it? The attractiveness of it. They got the good stuff. They don't seem to be protecting their stuff. They seem particularly vulnerable. They seem to be easily accessible and even more importantly, readily escape.

It's a place you can readily escape from, maybe even without detection. And it's what's near that that attracted me there to see that if I'm an offender and so on, or I hear about regularly from other offenders. So, but these things interact and come together. And so you might say that place is riskier because there are more high impact offenders

close to this store compared to another store. So it's what you're, it's your place. It's who you're co-located with from a building or structure standpoint, business standpoint, for instance, or how close you are to certain neighborhoods and escape routes, but it's also how close you are to certain neighborhoods and escape routes, but it's also how close you are to clusters of offenders. And the larger the cluster of offenders, high impact, particularly high rate offenders, the more likely that one or many more of them are going to be aware of your place and the status in their mind. This is all their perception, how attractive, how vulnerable

and how capable your place is. So think about that interaction of risky people and risky places and how one creates the other. The riskier you are in the more vulnerable and attractive, the more these people are going to come your way by the same token, the more of them that are around you, the riskier it is for you. So right, you see these two-way interactions going on, as we call it, think of drugs where you take more than one drug or medication,

they can interact in positive or not so positive ways. In addition, your body interacting with one or more of them. So don't want to get too complicated, but that's what we look at. We talk about clusters and connections and closeness of risky people. The communication, the preparation acquisition, and so on, these are things that also look at with offenders. Are they, how organized and disciplined are they? And that slightly may be different than how coordinated are they with others, right slightly maybe different than how coordinated are they with others, right, before or during or after a crime. So those are important characteristics to think about. How much do they coordinate with others before they hit? While they're

hitting, do they have people that are creating diversions and signaling and helping hand off things during the crime itself? And then after, how well coordinated are they with others? So I typically, more and more, even though our team actually changed the term ORT, Organized Retail Theft, ORC, almost 20 years ago now in journal articles or in an LP magazine, but, or coordinated crime. They're not particularly organized sometimes,

but they are coordinated somehow in some ways before, during, or after, or all the above. So looking at those kinds of things, how well they communicate with other offenders, how much do they prepare? Typically offenders don't prepare very much, but some do, and some do it very well. Pre-event indicators, PEIs, you can sometimes pick up on and generate those PEIs. Hey, somebody keeps watching us coming in,

coming out, not buying anything. They seem to know other people in the store, or maybe they're nodding at an employee if there's collusion potential and things like that. How well they acquire the tools they need, theft tools, weapons, things like that. How well did they convert to cash stolen goods, dispose of them? And then their travel methods. So something to think about, something to talk about. We'll see everybody hopefully in Gainesville, Florida,

at the University of Florida, that beautiful campus coming up this March. Stay tuned, go to lpresearch.org. Tune in to us, if you will, on X, but primarily on LinkedIn, about the LPRC and Reed Hayes. And I appreciate everybody tuning in to Crying Science, the podcast. Again, it may seem like it's not happening, but it is.

Our team is working away. You're gonna see some really, I think, exciting and creative Crime Science the podcast enhancements coming very soon. Our director of research working with Diego, Rodriguez, our producer, and others, lighting things up and getting ready to go. So lpresearch.org. Please stay in touch and stay safe.

Thanks for listening to the Crime Science Podcast presented by the Loss Prevention Research Council. If you enjoyed today's episode, you can find more Crime Science episodes and valuable information at lpresearch.org. The content provided in the Crime Science Podcast is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for legal, financial, or other advice. Views expressed by guests of the Crime Science Podcast are those of the authors and do not reflect the opinions

or positions of the Loss Prevention Research Council.