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Security in Stockholm's underground stations: The importance of environmental attributes and context

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Abstract

The aim of this article is to report on the security conditions in underground stations and surrounding areas in Stockholm, the capital of Sweden. The study is based on a comprehensive fieldwork combined with Geographical Information Systems techniques and regression models. Findings show that a relatively small share of reported events is crime; acts of public disorder are more common at the stations. Events tend to happen in the evenings – nights, holidays and weekends – and, at least for theft, in the hotter months of the year. Although the highest number of events is found in the central station, the so-called ‘end-stations’ show often higher rates than those located in the inner city. Results show that opportunities for crime are dependent on stations’ environmental attributes, type of neighbourhood in which they are located and city context. These findings lend weight to principles of traditional urban criminology theory such as routine activity and social disorganisation. The article concludes with directions for future research and suggestions for policy.

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Notes

  1. In November 2010, stations were revisited on the evening/weekend to get a better idea of specific features, such as illumination.

  2. Hot spots maps were produced using Kulldorff's scan test (SaTScan version 9.01; Kulldorff, 2010) and police-recorded data across Stockholm city. This technique has a rigorous inference theory for identifying statistically significant clusters (Kulldorff, 1997). The space–time scan statistics were used in a single retrospective analysis using data from 1 January 2006 to 31 December 2009. A 4-year data set was collapsed into ‘one year’. All space and time dimensions of the data are kept (by day and location) except ‘year’.

  3. Statistical Package for the Social Sciences, Version 17.0 (2010), but virtually any other statistical package can be used for this purpose.

  4. We employed Pearson's correlation for all independent variables in the five sets of covariates before Step 1 to identify variables that potentially contribute with similar information to the models. The histograms of the dependent variables showed skilled distribution. Thus, rates of crime and disorder were transformed into their natural logarithms.

  5. This term was first suggested in urban criminology by Ratcliffe and McCullagh (2001), referring to mismatch between crime hot spots and police perception of high-crime areas.

  6. Paraphrasing the known ‘Eyes on the street’ by Jane Jacobs (1961) in the book The Death and Life of Great American Cities, in which she suggested that people witnessing what happens in the streets reduces crime.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the Swedish Transport Administration (Traffikverket), Stockholm Public Transport (SL) and Stockholm municipality for financing this research project. We also thank Ulla Wittrock (Police in Stockholm County), Stefan Liljevall (Stockholm Statistics), Mats Pergel (SL) and Peter Assor (Veolia) for providing data for the analysis.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Architecture and the Built Environment, Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden

    Vania Ceccato, Adriaan Uittenbogaard & Roya Bamzar

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  1. Vania Ceccato
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  2. Adriaan Uittenbogaard
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Correspondence to Vania Ceccato.

Appendices

Appendix A

Figure A1

Figure A1
figure 7

The Stockholm underground system. Red; Green; Blue.Source: AB Storstockholms Lokaltrafik, 2011.

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Appendix B

Table B1

Table B1 The data set of study: variables from fieldwork and surroundings
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Ceccato, V., Uittenbogaard, A. & Bamzar, R. Security in Stockholm's underground stations: The importance of environmental attributes and context. Secur J 26, 33–59 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1057/sj.2011.32

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