Crime Diversity: Reexamining Crime Richness Across Spatial Scales

Although much of the crime and place literature seeks to explain crime frequency in relation to environmental conditions, few studies have examined crime diversity in space. This article reexamines a study of crime diversity in relation to a neutral model assuming environmental conditions have minimal influence on crime patterns. The original study results show that the variety of crime types in a given area (i.e., crime richness) increases regularly across spatial scales, and is largely consistent with a neutral or random process. This conclusion makes no appeal to the crime-environment dependencies often believed to influence crime occurrence, making the study a worthy candidate for additional scrutiny. The current study first verifies the original study results in Los Angeles, CA, and demonstrates their robustness with alternative crime classification schemes. Next, two alternative methods are used to check whether results differ when (a) locations are sampled randomly from the entire city rather than observed crime locations, and (b) when the unit of analysis is grid cells rather than “point-buffers.” Finally, all analyses are replicated in St. Louis, MO, as a first look at generalizability. Conclusions are largely consistent with the original study, but important differences arise when alternative sampling techniques and units of analysis are used. Future directions for crime diversity research are discussed