Integrative approaches to understanding the CRISOLA phenomenology

Abstract

The previous chapter gave an overview of the main findings identified across the diverse methods used in this study as based on statistical analysis, interviews with policy makers and administrators at the NUTS levels as well as on-the-ground research. this chapter focuses on the visual identification of the hotspot approach in an attempt to review whether the crime-social and landuse aspects as seen by the policy-makers and administrators and as visualised from the ground through surveys. This is then compared to the spatial statistics outputted from the Maltese point data analysis, which allows for a comparison of the perspectives emanating from the interviews and the reported data as mapped in space. A detailed study of the CRISOLA structures as covered by this project sought to understand the outcomes of the realities faced by the people on the ground, the experts in the implementation agencies pertaining to the three pivots as well as the administrators who manage the day-to-day running of the areas. The project’s emphasis on the spatial analysis of crime through an immersive process was aimed at investigating the relationships between the activity and the social and urban spaces they occur in. The horizontal approach is evident where GI data layers are created for each activity and the relevant correlations investigated. As identified in the project proposal, this process builds a visual map of the offences, the social relationships they pertain to and the landuse aspects they partake in. The project attempts to identify the linkages between the socio-economic/cultural parameters towards an understanding of poverty and deprivation as a surrogate for social and community health, the offences as a measure of attractiveness of an area and focuses on offender data as a measure of social disorganisation and the landuse zoning as a measure of affluence, leading to an understanding of opportunity structures.