© 2014 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 0955–1662 Security Journal Vol. 27, 3, 263–283 www.palgrave-journals.com/sj/ Original Article Property crime on college campuses: A case study using GIS and related tools Shelly A. McGrath*, Suzanne E. Perumean-Chaney and John J. Sloan III Department of Justice Sciences, University of Alabama at Birmingham, UBOB 210, 1530 3rd Ave South, Birmingham, AL 35294-4562, USA. E-mails: smcgrath@uab.edu; schaney@uab.edu; prof@uab.edu *Corresponding author. Abstract Crime on college campuses appears related to the physical characteristics and routines of the people occupying that space. Environmental criminology suggests that nodes – locations to and from which people routinely travel – help explain the distribution of crime in a given space. The current study examined the role of nodes in explaining the distribution of property crime on a college campus using 24 months of police incident data. More specifically, using GIS and related tools, we compared the distribution of property crime occurring at locations in a major medical center on the campus with locations in the non-medical side. Results revealed more property crime occurred on the medical side of campus and that differences existed in crime patterns for the two nodes based on time, location and season. We conclude by discussing the utility of GIS in allocating resources and crime prevention strategies for college campuses. Security Journal (2014) 27, 263–283. doi:10.1057/sj.2012.24; published online 4 June 2012 Keywords: colleges and universities; crime mapping; property crime; nodes; environmental criminology Introduction Despite crime existing on college and university campuses in the United States since their creation over 300 years ago, only in the past 25 years have researchers begun systematically examining crime and related issues on US college and university campuses (Fisher and Sloan, 2007; Sloan and Fisher, 2011). Most of these studies have attempted to either describe or explain the dynamics of on-campus victimization, in particular the role played by students’ lifestyles in enhancing victimization risk (Fisher et al, 1998; Mustaine and Tewksbury, 2007). Recently, however, researchers have begun examining the spatial and temporal distribution of crime on college campuses. Their focus, rather than on describing or explaining the dynamics of individual victimization, has been with identifying, describing and explaining how the design features of college campuses explain the crime patterns found there (Mullen et al, 2001; Brinkley and Laster, 2003; Robinson and Roh, 2007). The current study extends this work by exploring, using crime mapping, how the design features of a specific college campus – combined with the activity patterns associated with that design – help explain the concentration of crime in certain ‘hot spots’ (Sherman et al, 1989) on the campus.