The Ambient Population and Crime Analysis

This article uses an alternative measure of the population at risk, the ambient population (provided by Oak Ridge National Laboratory), in crime rate calculations. It is shown through a variety of statistical analyses at two different scales of aggregation that this alternatively calculated crime rate is not always related to the conventionally calculated crime rate. The implications of this finding are that past theoretical testing and policy formation might have been based on spurious results, showing the importance of remaining current with the developments of geographic information science technologies and data availability when undertaking a spatial analysis of crime.