A new criminological theory entitled Dynamic Victimization has been proposed as a better explanation for crime and as a way to scientifically forecast it.
Click here to read the article on Forecasting Crime on the Dysology website.
The outline of the theory, described by its author Dr Mike Sutton as "data hungry" looks like it would require huge data collection - in the UK alone - on a scale to be envied by MI5, GCHQ, the CIA, the National Census, British Crime Survey and physics research.
But if that is what it takes to forecast crime should criminologists not reach for the sky in the same way that scientists get huge funding to reach for the moon, stars and explanations for the universe?
Crime, like the weather, presents mankind with both trivial and deadly serious problems. Should we not take our knowledge forward so that we can forecast crime with the same accuracy we can forecast the weather?
2 comments:
Weather forecasting has some scientific background, but empirically how can one predict if Mr Jones will rob a bank?
Ciaran
A common mistake made by those distinguishing between the natural ans social sciences is the assumption that there are NO regularities in the affairs of man...as there are in nature.
While unique crimes could not be predicted - patterns of crime could. Think genocide, Somali piracy and hate crimes in the UK and USA.
Theft from motor vehicles will rise again as soon as they contain items that the owner cannot easily remove and transport from them that are valuable. That is what cause the huge rise in theft from vehicles in the 80's when top radio cassette players sold for £1000 in Halfords. And VCRs combined with smoking heroin and unemployment pushed burglary sky high. Anf theft of mobile phones followed the same course.
Now its scrap metal theft - for sale to China.
Demand + Cultural factors + levels of security/vulnerability are the major components that (if we knew more about them at any given point in time) we could use to forecast crime.
So while the odd bank robbery would be off the radar - a rise in online credit card fraud would not.
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