This edited collection provides an original and comprehensive take on retail crime and its prevention, by combining international data and multidisciplinary perspectives from criminologists, economists, geographers, police officers and other experts. Drawing on environmental criminology theory and situational crime prevention, it focusses on crime and safety in retail environments but also the interplay between individuals, products and settings such as stores, commercial streets and shopping malls, as well as the wider context of situational conditions of the supply chain in which crime occurs. Chapters offer state-of-the-art research on retail crime from a range of countries such as Australia, Brazil, Israel, Italy, Sweden, the UK and the USA. This methodological and well-researched study is devoted to both academics and practitioners from a variety of disciplines and backgrounds whose common interest is to prevent retail crime and overall retail loss.

The chapters 'Crime in a Scandinavian Shopping Centre' and 'Perceived Safety in a Shopping Centre' are published open access under a CC BY 4.0 license at link.springer.com.

The objective of this article is to report patterns of passenger's satisfaction with their safety at an international European airport.1 The study is based on an analysis of a 2014–2015 passenger safety survey with particular focus on the impact of the airport's environment on passenger safety. Chi-square analysis and binary logistic regression underpin the methodology used in the study. Findings show that about one third of passengers are dissatisfied with their perceived safety. Airport entrances, security checkpoints, boarding areas, toilets, and restaurants are places where passengers declare feeling less satisfied with their safety. Regardless whether passengers are arriving or departing, their satisfaction with safety is affected by their perception of an airport's environment (e.g., elevators, overall maintenance) and also by the overall experience of being in transit. Findings call for research and interventions that consider passenger safety as a multifaceted phenomenon and that adopt a whole-journey approach to transit safety.

A survey has been performed on departing middle- and long-distance train passengers on a selection of 14 since 1990 new or rebuilt railway stations in Sweden. The passengers’ rating of security was one of the questions included in the survey, which dealt with several aspects on localization of the station. A linear regression analysis (OLS) revealed that the Perceived Station Security (PSS) Index is explained by a number of physical factors in the station environment. Individual or socio-economic factors are however too vague to be significant. The model is significant but the model fit is low and the results should be interpreted as preliminary. Examples of environmental factors that increase the PSS are if the station has built-in stairs between station building and platforms and if there is a café or restaurant with seating in the station, while reconstruction in progress decreases the PSS. The distance to the city or local centre has an effect, and peripheral stations in general have a lower PSS than centrally located.

The aim of this article is to discuss the trends and nature of rural violence in Brazil. Assuming the hypothesis of an increase in violence rates, urban–rural violence rates are compared at three geographical levels: national (Brazil), state (São Paulo), and municipal (Rio Claro). The study combines the analyses of official statistics with newspaper reports, videos, and articles published by the national media. Findings indicate an increase in violence in rural areas in recent decades but such a rise is far from homogenous across the country; it shows links to patterns of population change, economic expansion, and organized crime. Although violence has long being an inherent characteristic of rural Brazil—a place of conflicts and struggles—it is argued here that the more recent rise in violence is distinct from the past, at least in its portrayal by the media. The article finalizes by suggesting a research agenda to improve the understanding of the dynamics of violence in the Brazilian context.

The objective of this study is to understand the spatial and temporal dynamics of suicides in commuting railway environments. Data on suicides in Stockholm commuting railway from 2006 to 2013 was analysed. The study sets out to identify significant clusters in suicides then evaluate whether commuting railway environments affect variations in suicide rates. Fieldwork inspection, spatial cluster techniques (NNHC and Getis-Ord statistics) and regression models underlie the methodology of study. Findings show no seasonality was observed in suicide cases, but winter months concentrate a larger share of events. Suicides do not occur evenly throughout the day but tend to take place more often in weekdays. Modelling findings shows that suicide rates increase with speed trains and decrease where barriers along tracks are installed. Although high speed trains are still a motive of concern for suicide prevention, findings call for a whole railway-approach to safety - one that extends maintenance beyond the platforms and stations' vicinities.

This study examines the adoption of household safety protection (HSP) measures in Stockholm, the capital of Sweden. Drawing upon assumptions from environmental criminology and situational crime prevention, the study explores the impact of crime and fear of crime on HSP. Geographical Information System (GIS) combines in a single dataset data on HSP adoption: A cross-sectional resident safety survey, socio-demographic statistics of the areas and newspaper vignettes. A pre-analysis of the data is used to check whether HSP adoption varied by tenancy type. Then, hypothesis testing is performed using binary logistic regression models to identify significant predictors of HSP, including individuals' previous victimization, perception of high crime rates in the neighborhood, declared altruistic fear, and exposure to crime in the local media, while controlling for individual and areal covariates. Protection strategies are found to differ significantly according to tenancy type, and among those who rent, HSP varies by type of housing company. The likelihood of having several types of HSP was found to increase with perception of crime and altruistic fear but to only a small extent, previous victimization.

Although the international literature shows strong evidence of the effect of crime in large urban areas, particularly on housing prices, little is known about the link between crime and property prices in nonmetropolitan areas. This article describes the effect of residential burglary on the housing market in a nonmetropolitan municipality in Sweden, using data on property sales in 2005 and 2011. The study employs different strategies of hedonic price modelling to estimate the impact of residential burglary while controlling for property and neighbourhood characteristics; in particular, it explores the use of quantile regression and spatial analysis. The findings show that residential burglary has a significant negative effect on property prices in 2011 but no impact in 2005, which might be a result of the dramatic global economic downturn between these years. The article concludes with a discussion on the practical implications of the findings and offers suggestions for future research.

A park is a desirable feature when people are purchasing a property. Buyers are ready to pay more for properties surrounded by natural amenities, such as a pleasant park. However, if a park is targeted by crime and disorder, then it may have a negative effect on people's appraisal. The aim of this study is to reach a better understanding of how parks and crime rates affect housing prices taking into account residential properties and parks type. Stockholm, the capital of Sweden, is used as the case study. The methodology has two stages. An extensive field work was performed in a selected number of parks to help characterize the parks in Stockholm. This information was gathered with secondary data about parks using Geographic Information System. This pre-assessment was later followed by the analysis of 2008s apartment sales using hedonic modelling to assess the effect of parks alone and in combination with crime rates. Results suggest that the effect of parks on prices vary by park type (increased with, e.g. features of cultural and national interest and decreased with ball games or boating facilities) while an aggregated measure of parks lowers overall apartment prices. More interestingly, findings show that the price of apartments tends to be discounted in areas where parks have relatively high rates of violence and vandalism.