The Study of Crime, Criminality, and Victimisation: an Examination of Theory, Analytic Approaches, and Application

This chapter will discuss violent and non-violent property crimes using environmental criminological frameworks to help explain causation, while acknowledging the impacts of colonialism and systemic oppression on Indigenous peoples, including those who come into conflict with colonial law. This is important for a variety of reasons. First, the police, the courts, and other institutions may discriminate against Indigenous peoples (Allen, 2020). Further, systemic oppression, racism, and colonisation include institutional racism and discrimination sanctioned by the police, courts, and corrections against Indigenous peoples. As a result, Indigenous peoples are more likely to be apprehended, prosecuted, and convicted.  Second, contact with Western culture and colonialisation has disrupted social life in many Indigenous communities. This disruption has led to a weakening of social control over community members. Why is this important? Well, some may argue that certain races are inherently more law-abiding than others, but they are able to hold such an opinion by ignoring the powerful social forces that cause so many Indigenous peoples to be incarcerated in Canada (Fitzgerald et al., 2019; Monchalin, 2016). Third, a disproportionately large number of Indigenous peoples are incarcerated (Fitzgerald et al., 2019; Monchalin, 2016) and poor (Islam & Sheikh, 2010). Although the great majority of poor people are law abiding, poverty and its handicaps are associated with elevated crime rates (Pantazis & Gordon, 2018). Lastly, according to scholars in the field, Indigenous peoples commit crimes that are more often visible than those committed by non-Indigenous peoples. For example, street crimes (e.g., burglary, larceny-theft, motor vehicle theft, and arson) are more visible than suite crimes (e.g., corporate crimes: See 15 Crimes of the Powerful) and they more often lead to prosecution and conviction (Friedrichs, 2019). This is a part of systemic oppression and colonialisation through the imposition of the Indian Act in which Indigenous peoples are policed, patrolled, and monitored. Since street crimes are more visible, charges and convictions are higher than for white-collar or suite crimes (Allen, 2020).

This chapter endeavours to provide you with a strong understanding of environmental criminology and its core concepts (e.g., crime patterns and spatial factors).  To begin, you will be given a brief explanation of the difference between environmental criminology and green criminology. Then, this chapter will provide a discussion on the theories within the environmental criminology framework: routine activity theory, geometric theory of crime, rational choice theory, and pattern theory of crime. Furthermore, the chapter briefly discusses the implications of environmental criminology, both theoretical and practical, for preventing crime. The chapter concludes with a discussion of why environmental criminology is important to the field of criminology in understanding the spatial and temporal dimensions of crime.

Throughout the chapter, you are asked to keep in mind that the environmental criminological frameworks discussed have been mainly built upon a Western view of human nature and to recognise that Indigenous populations have suffered the effects of colonisation and systemic oppression that have led to their overrepresentation in the Canadian criminal justice system. The Indigenous experience of forcible removal from traditional lands and territories has shaped the narrative of interconnectivity between poverty and crime You are also reminded to understand and respect that differences amongst Indigenous worldviews and Western worldviews are essential because there are opposite approaches to knowledge, connectedness, and the lived experience involving crime.