Human Mobility and Crime: Theoretical Approaches and Novel Data Collection Strategies

This review outlines approaches to explanations of crime that incorporate the concept of human mobility-or the patterns of movement throughout space of individuals or populations in the context of everyday routines-with a focus on novel strategies for the collection of geographically referenced data on mobility patterns. We identify three approaches to understanding mobility-crime linkages: (a) Place and neighborhood approaches characterize local spatial units of analysis of varying size with respect to the intersection in space and time of potential offenders, victims, and guardians; (b) person-centered approaches emphasize the spatial trajectories of individuals and person-place interactions that influence crime risk; and (c) ecological network approaches consider links between persons or collectivities based on shared activity locations, capturing influences of broader systems of interconnection on spatial- and individual-level variation in crime. We review data collection strategies for the measurement of mobility across these approaches, considering both the challenges and promise of mobility-based research for criminology.