The most important zone when considering crime is the Transition Zone. Zone A is the Central Business District, Zone B is the Transition, or 'Twilight' Zone, C is the Council Estates, Zone D is the Commuter Zone and Zone E is the Countryside area. This is known Burgess' Concentric Zone Theory. They developed the idea of natural urban areas, which consisted of concentric zones, which extended out from downtown central business district to the commuter zone at the fringes of the city.Įach zone had its own structure and organisation, characteristics and unique inhabitants. Burgess then examined area characteristics instead of criminals for their explanations of high crime. Ecology is the study of animals and plants and how they relate to one another in their natural habitat. Burgess introduced an ecological analysis of crime causation.

The study of environmental criminology resulted mainly from the works of Burgess (1925) and Shaw and Mackay (1942). I will then do a critique of these measures and conclude by considering geographic prophiling, a new mechanism that does not seek to prevent crimes, but rather help solve them. This will include action that can be taken by individuals themselves, or by councils, local governments, the police etc. I will then look at some of the ways society has tried to reduce the amount of crime faced by residents of cities and towns today. I will firstly take a brief look at the history and the emergence of environmental criminology as a field of study and research. However, there is very clear relationship between these factors, and in this essay I will examine this relationship. '2 This particular field would not exist if there were no relation between the geographical distribution of offences, or of victimisation, or of offender residence. '1 More specifically, environmental criminology is 'the study of crime, criminality and victimisation as they relate, first, to particular places, and secondly, to the way that individuals and organisations shape their activities spatially, and in so doing are in turn influenced by place-based or spatial factors. Environmental criminologists are interested in 'land usage, traffic patterns and street design.

Environmental criminology is the examination of this fourth element, the place.

There must be a law for an offender to violate there must a target or a victim for the offender to prey on, and their must a place for this to happen. A crime cannot take place without these four elements. When these four elements come together, a crime has been committed. There are four elements to a crime, a law, an offender, a target or victim and a place.

4 elements of crime