Crime and the Environment

Abstract

Figure 3.1 illustrated how the condition of the individual, whether offender or victim, can be understood as being within a wider social, political, cultural and economic context. There is another set of circles of influence that surround and influence individual circumstances; this set recognises the spatial and environmental context within which we all exist:

• the nature of the buildings in which we live, work, play or study

• that building’s relationship to its surrounding spaces and location in the neighbourhood

• the neighbourhood’s relationship to the rest of the town or countryside

• the location of the region and nation in which we live.

The two sets of circles are complementary, overlapping and interactive and, ideally, would be better illustrated as axes of a three-dimensional sphere. This chapter will address this second axis — the environmental one.

Space is the stage on which man’s behaviour unfolds. Space provides the occasions for motives — the opportunities, temptations and pressures. Space conditions human relationships, brings people together and separates them. Space undergirds social climate, sets limits, inspires, beckons, frustrates, isolates, crowds, intrudes, liberates. (Toch 1980: xi)