Spatiality and Justice

Spatial Criminology is a burgeoning field, incorporating spatial processes, relationships, and locational and socio-cultural context in understanding and interpreting crime patterns and behaviour. The aim of this Thematic Group is to delve into these issues, exploring how spatiality impacts crime and responses and contributes to the broader field of criminology.

We propose to adopt a spatial-contextual thinking approach, accounting for spatial processes, such as movement, boundaries, including those which are physical and socio-cultural, crime-attracting or reducing factors, including that of distance, proximity, exposure, and access, while situating these within a broader social context.

With the precision of spatial data and methodologies advancing rapidly, there is a growing demand for a focused discussion on spatial criminology, including the importance of developing and integrating multiple theoretical perspectives and disciplines. There is also an emerging body of digital methods to better explore understandings of crime in the context of place. Our Thematic Group will provide a dedicated space for criminologists with an interest in spatiality and crime to collaborate, share ideas, explore novel methodological approaches and develop new theories.

Notably, in the broader context of criminology, the concepts of temporality, place and space are inseparable. They are intimately connected to the study and understanding and perceptions of deviance, crime and victimisation, with physical, geographic and ideological elements determining experiences of and responses to criminality. As such, this proposed group will be of interest to criminologists with a wide range of research interests and expertise, including environmental crime, rural crime, neighbourhood effects and micro-place research, and ‘spaceless’ (technology-facilitated) crimes and responses , ghost criminology and dark tourism, among others.

However, spatial criminology sets itself apart by going beyond acknowledging this connection. It seeks to explicitly measure and construct theories around spatial processes and relationships and in ways that considers space more holistically than simply physicality and geography. The crux of spatial criminology lies in examining the inherent, detailed intricacies of space — its composition, its influence, and its relationships — and how these spatial elements interact with experiences and perceptions of crime, justice and places/spaces.