地理学视角下犯罪者行为研究进展

犯罪地理学以社会问题为导向,关注犯罪现象的格局、过程与机理,沿着“揭示问题、服务安全、解决问题”的思路,去破解复杂的社会难题,并在公共安全和犯罪防控领域贡献力量。本文基于地理学视角,从犯罪出行、犯罪空间决策、重复犯罪三大研究主题出发,综述了国内外犯罪者行为的研究进展。结果表明,国外研究取得了较多成果,如：①犯罪出行方面发现了就近掠夺和外出犯罪的空间模式;不同犯罪类型的出行距离存在显著差异;以及犯罪出行距离受犯罪者个体特征、地理特征、犯罪收益和情感因素的影响。②犯罪空间决策受经济因素、社会因素以及犯罪者空间意识的影响。③重复犯罪存在时空聚集性和时空临近性。国内研究主要集中在国外理论与经验引介,犯罪时空分布、形成机理与空间防控,以及犯罪模拟与预测方面,而地理学视角下犯罪者行为研究尚处于初始阶段,有许多空白亟需填补。总体而言,在犯罪者研究领域,仍存在以下3点不足：①在犯罪出行方面,综合的视角不多;②在犯罪空间决策方面,尚未涉及犯罪空间决策的时间差异及形成机制;③在重复犯罪方面,尚未考虑过去的犯罪活动和经验。最后,论文从视角、内容、方法及应用上提出未来的研究重点：注重综合性视角的实证分析;开展针对犯罪团伙的研究;合理利用大数据分析犯罪者行为的规律、过程和机理,避免导致推理错误;注重理论研究成果的转化,满足国家社会治安的重大需求,并提升犯罪地理学的学科价值。

Research progress of criminal behavior from the perspective of geography

With widening income gaps and excessive concentration of wealth, China faces serious challenges in developing comprehensive measures to maintain law and order and create a social environment with a desirable level of public safety and social stability. Geography of crime is oriented to social problems—it pays attention to the patterns, processes, and mechanisms of crime phenomenon and aims to contribute to the improvement of public safety and crime prevention. Based on the geographical perspective, this article reviews the progress of research in China and internationally on criminal behavior with regard to crime travel, offender spatial decision, and repeated crime, and makes some recommendations for future research. The review shows that the study of criminal behavior has been developed for many years and has obtained a large amount of results, but there are still some research gaps. (1) With regard to journeys to crime, previous studies have mainly considered individual characteristics of offenders, geographical features, and influencing factors such as the proceeds of crime, without considering the dynamic effects of the environmental factors. Therefore, future studies need to adopt a comprehensive perspective by taking into account the social environment, the built environment, and the ambient population (such as regional flow, commuter population, daily activities, and so on) comprehensively to examine whether a crime is affected by these factors under different spatial and temporal scenarios. (2) With regard to criminal spatial decision, international research examines separately the spatial and temporal aspects of decision making of various types of criminals. Therefore, future research in China on geography of crime should not only consider spatial factors, but also integrate the temporal aspect of crime to improve our understanding of the mechanism of the crime phenomenon. (3) The impact of past activities and experiences on sequential crimes by repeat offenders is largely overlooked. Hence, systematic analysis of repeat offenders should be strengthened. Future research should focus on, but not limited to (1) comprehensive empirical analysis of crimes; (2) research on co-offending groups; (3) the use of big data to analyze the patterns of offenders’ behavior and processes and mechanisms of crimes to provide a solid foundation for crime prediction. Meanwhile, deficiencies of big data should not be underestimated; (4) theoretical research and technological development to meet the need of social security in China, and to provide recommendations for the modernization of the governance system and governance capacity, while enhance the value of research of geography of crime.