Busy Businesses and Busy Contexts: The Distribution and Sources of Crime at Commercial Properties

• DOI: 10.1177/0022427819848083
• Author: Rebecca J. Walter,Marie Skubak Tillyer
• Date: 01 November 2019
• Published date: 01 November 2019
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Busy Businesses

and Busy Contexts:

The Distribution

and Sources of Crime

at Commercial

Properties

Marie Skubak Tillyer

1

and Rebecca J. Walter

2

Abstract

Objective: Examine the distribution and sources of crime across freestanding

businesses in San Antonio. We test hypotheses about the main and inter-

active effects of neighborhood and business characteristics on crime at the

business, with a focus on busy contexts and busy businesses. Method: Police

crime incident data are spatially joined to study area business parcels. Addi-

tional data sources include Infogroup USA Business Data, the American

Community Survey, and an Environmental Protection Agency traffic activity

indicator. Multilevel negative binomial regression models are estimated to

observe the main and interactive effects of census block group and business

variables on crime at the parcel. Results: Businesses located in block groups

with more commercial property and high levels of vehicular traffic experi-

ence more crime. In addition, crime is higher at “busy” businesses, as

1

Department of Criminal Justice, University of Texas at San Antonio, San Antonio, TX, USA

2

College of Built Environments, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

Corresponding Author:

Marie Skubak Tillyer, Department of Criminal Justice, University of Texas at San Antonio,

501 W. Cesar E. Chavez Blvd., San Antonio, TX 78207, USA.

Email: marie.tillyer@utsa.edu

Journal of Research in Crime and

Delinquency

2019, Vol. 56(6) 816-850

ªThe Author(s) 2019

Article reuse guidelines:

sagepub.com/journals-permissions

DOI: 10.1177/0022427819848083

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indicated by employee size, sales volume, and square footage. Busy contexts

and busy businesses do not appear to interact to increase crime at the

parcel beyond their main effects. Conclusions: Crime is clustered at relatively

few businesses, and this variation can not be explained by business type

alone. Both neighborhood and business characteristics are associated with

crime at freestanding businesses, with busy businesses an d those within

busier block groups experiencing more crime.

Keywords

crime and place, businesses, crime concentration, busy places

In his 2014 Sutherland Address to the American Society of Criminology,

Weisburd (2015) emphasized the need to focus on crime concentration at

places and, among other things, encouraged the use of theoretically

informed models to examine why crime concentrates at relatively few

places. The study of crime and place in criminology has drawn from social

disorganization and environmental criminology, with researchers relying on

both the broader social and physical environment shaped by neighborhood

characteristics, as well as micro features of places that create criminal

opportunities to understand the spatial patterns of crime (Weisburd et al.

2016; Wilcox and Tillyer 2018). At the neighborhood level, the social

disorganization tradition suggests that communities unable to realize com-

mon values and exert social control suffer higher crime rates (Bursik 1988;

Bursik and Grasmick 1993; Shaw and McKay 1942). In recent decades,

there has been a shift in emphasis to smaller spatial units of analysis in light

of numerous empirical studies documenting the “tight coupling of crime at

place” (Weisburd, Groff, and Yang 2012, p. 9). Environmental criminolo-

gical theories generally focus on how the characteristics and routine activ-

ities of places and their users can create or reduce opportunities for crime,

thus accounting for the concentration of crime at micro places (Branting-

ham and Brantingham 1995; Eck, Clarke, and Guerette 2007; Eck and

Weisburd 1995; Weisburd, Morris, and Groff 2009).

While initially the influences of social disorganization and opportunity

on the spatial distribution of crime were examined separately, more recent

theoretical and empirical work acknowledges that they may operate simul-

taneously to affect crime at places (see, e.g., Weisburd 2012; Weisburd,

Groff, and Yang 2014; Weisburd et al. 2017; Wilcox and Tillyer 2018;

Wilcox, Gialopsos, and Land 2013). Rel ated, a considerable amount of

Tillyer and Walter 817

crime and place research has focused on specific forms of nearby places—

such as schools, bars, and payday lenders (Kubrin et al. 2011; Roncek and

Faggiani 1985; Roncek and Maier 1991)—with the assumption being that

some places are inherently criminogenic because of the types of services

they provide. Recently, however, Wilcox and Eck (2011) challenged the

assumption that specific types of places—or what they call, “facilities”—

are inherently criminogenic. Instead, they assert that “it is the traffic asso-

ciated with the studied land uses, not the activities of the facilities per se,

that likely lead to problems for the area” (p. 475). Wilcox and Eck (2011)

predict there will be considerable variability within types of places, and that

high-traffic places and contexts will experience more crime.

The validity of these predictions has important implications for busi-

nesses, which often use a variety of strategies to maximize traffic as a means

to generate profits, including investing in real estate in high-traffic areas

and implementing marketing activities to drive store traffic (Perdikaki,

Kesavan, and Swaminathan 2012). Understanding the extent to which these

strategies also have the unintended consequence of increasing crime risk

can help businesses anticipate and address crime problems. Determining

whether high-traffic places and contexts experience more crime—indepen-

dent of the type of place or land use—also has important theoretical impli-

cations for an integrated multilevel approach aimed at explaining the

distribution of crime across micro places (Wilcox et al. 2013).

To this end, the present study builds on and extends the existing crime

concentrationliterature by examining the distribution and sources of crimeat

freestanding businesses in San Antonio, TX.

1

Using an integrate d theoretical

approach informed by both social disorganization and opportunity perspec-

tives, we embrace the importance of micro place characteristics but also

acknowledge that such places are embedded within structural contexts that

may directly shapeopportunities for crime, as well as moderatethe effects of

place-level features (Wilcox et al. 2013). To date, crime and place studies

emphasizing smaller microgeographic units have focused primarily on street

segments, with analyses often accounting for the proximity of specific types

of land uses. Our study differsin that we focus on crime at the business (i.e.,

the parcel level) rather than the effect of the business on crime in the sur-

rounding area (i.e., at the street segment or larger aggregate). One benefit of

studying crime at small spatial units such as freestanding businesses, as

opposed to street segments or shopping malls comprised of multiple entities

and business owners,is that freestanding businesses have distinct place man-

agement with theauthority to respond to place-basedrisk factors for crime by

implementing strategies for prevention.

818 Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 56(6)