Thom Snaphaan - Senior advisor | Criminologist - Openbaar Ministerie | LinkedIn

This article assesses whether ambient population is a more suitable population-at-risk measure for crime types with mobile targets than residential population for the purpose of intelligence-led policing applications. Specifically, the potential use of ambient population as a crime rate denominator and predictor for predictive policing models is evaluated, using mobile phone data (with a total of 9,397,473 data points) as a proxy. The results show that ambient population correlates more…

Even though the dark number is especially high for cybercrimes, it is unclear by whom and to whom cybercrime is reported. Therefore, this study will answer the following questions: (1) who reports cybercrime incidents, and (2) to whom do victims report cybercrime? Analyses based on survey data including 334 recent cybercrime victims, indicate that 73.4% of victims do not report the incident. Cybercrime victims who do report are significantly older. In addition, 40.4% of the reporting victims…

Employing a multilevel perspective on the health effects of social capital, this study analyzes how individual and neighborhood differences in self-rated health in Ghent (Belgium), relate to individual and collective social mechanisms, when taking demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of individuals into account. This study estimates the health effects of social trust, informal social control and disorder at the neighborhood level and social support and network size at the individual…

Big data en innovatieve methoden winnen aan belang in wetenschappelijk onderzoek. Dit komt onder meer door de digitalisering van onze dagelijkse activiteiten en ontwikkelingen in het domein van artificiële intelligentie. Hoewel andere disciplines hiervan volop de vruchten plukken, blijven de criminologische en veiligheidswetenschappen, zowel onderzoeks- als onderwijsmatig, traditioneel wat achter. Onterecht, want de potentie is enorm.

Met deze verzameling van beloftevolle en bruikbare…

Tot op heden is er weinig bekend over wat een individu doet nadat hij/zij slachtoffer werd van cybercriminaliteit. In deze studie wordt daarom dieper ingegaan op het zoeken naar formele (i.e. aangiftegedrag) en informele steun (i.e. hulp en advies vragen) na een incident. Vier factoren worden hierbij in rekening genomen: 1) socio-demografische en -economische kenmerken, 2) sociaal kapitaal, 3) interne reacties op het incident (i.e. zelfverwijt en ontkenning) en 4) gepercipieerde ernst en…

An important portion of internet users have faced cybercrime in recent years. One successful strategy for dealing with cybercrime victimization is to seek social support. However, previous studies showed that only a limited number of victims reaches out to family or friends to ask for help after a cybercrime incident. The current study sought to gain a better understanding of victims’ social support seeking by exploring its antecedents. Specifically, the study took into account the role of (1)…

The purpose of this study is to identify the added value of new and emerging data sources in environmental criminology, in comparison to traditional research methodologies and data sources. In this contribution, the state of the art based on recent endeavors regarding conventional research methodologies and data sources is compared to the extent in which big data have been used in environmental criminology to date. By doing this, we contribute to the understanding of the toolkit for research in…

This study examines to what extent new and emerging data sources or big data have been empirically used to measure key theoretical concepts within environmental criminology. By means of a scoping review, aimed at studies published between 2005 and 2018, insight is provided into the characteristics of studies that used big data sources within environmental criminology. The type and extent of big data sources used, as well as the strengths and weaknesses of these data sources, are synthesized…

This study examines the extent to which crime concentrations occur at micro places, in order to test Weisburd’s law of crime concentration at places, in two large Belgian cities. Police-registered crime data for the period 2004–2012 were used. Analyses were conducted at the grid level (using 200 meters by 200 meters grid cells), as a proxy for behavior settings. This study assesses Weisburd’s theoretical proposition and by (partly) replicating prior empirical research, we conclude that the…

The principal aim of this multilevel study was to assess the impact of collective efficacy and disorder, as neighborhood characteristics, and individual social capital on an individual’s avoidance behavior, independent of the neighborhood composition. The theoretical backdrop to the present study integrates insights from social capital theory, collective efficacy theory, and broken windows theory. The multilevel model is based on an individual-level questionnaire of inhabitants (N = 2,730) and…

The spatial concentrations of crime are increasingly being studied in smaller units of analysis. This study examines the extent to which crime levels occur at micro places. Weisburd argues there is a law of crime concentration at micro places. His so-called ‘law of crime concentration at places’ states that within an urban context a limited bandwidth of micro places is associated with a specific cumulative proportion of crime (e.g. 25 or 50 percent of crime in a city). In this study the authors…