Criminal Justice

ABSTRACT Crime on college campuses appears related to the physical characteristics and routines of the people occupying that space. Environmental criminology suggests that nodes – locations to and from which people routinely travel – help explain the distribution of crime in a given space. The current study examined the role of nodes in explaining the distribution of property crime on a college campus using 24 months of police incident data. More specifically, using GIS and related tools, we compared the distribution of property crime occurring at locations in a major medical center on the campus with locations in the non-medical side. Results revealed more property crime occurred on the medical side of campus and that differences existed in crime patterns for the two nodes based on time, location and season. We conclude by discussing the utility of GIS in allocating resources and crime prevention strategies for college campuses.