Dr Antoinette Keaney Bell presents at North South Criminology Conference

Dr Antoinette Keaney Bell (SLSS Hub, Queen’s University Belfast) presented ‘Hidden harm – Exploring the use of Geographical Information System geostatistical
analysis to identify where Child Criminal Exploitation might cluster’ at the North South Criminology Conference this week in Maynooth University.  The Conference in its 16th year hosts academic sessions on many aspects of criminology, including Pathways to Offending for Young People, Community Safety, Crime and Security, Young Adulthood and the Justice System and many more.

Antoinette’s presentation looked at the following:
Since 2021, the phenomenon of Child Criminal Exploitation (CCE) has become a policy priority. Across Northern Ireland (NI) there are clusters of activity where communities continue to experience and be impacted by violent crime, gang-related activities and CCE. Some children, in some communities are more affected by elevated serious crime and violence (Walsh et al., 2024), requiring a better understanding of where and why violence is experienced and targeting those areas with preventative and remedial interventions. Geographical Information Systems (GIS) use databases to manage, analyse and display geospatial data. In this paper GIS was harnessed to explore a methodological approach and provide a review of where it would be expected that CCE could cluster in NI. Method: Geospatial data was input to the Spatial Statistics toolbox in Esri ArcGIS Pro v3.4.2 software. Geodatabases, feature classes and shapefiles were input, all of which contain the attribute and location information for the data being analysed. Sources presented include, 354,528 street level crime locations for NI from May 2021 to July 2023, analysis of a subset violent crime incidents, deprivation and demographic statistics. Findings and Implications: GIS has provided a novel method for reviewing potential CCE locations. The methodological approach produced results that could be reviewed at a macro, meso and micro scale level. The models created to assess where CCE is occurring or may be occurring can further be validated via an input from a variety of employment sectors. For some interventions a whole of NI approach may be required while at others, for example, where resources are limited, the information provided from this analysis can provide location specific bespoke interventions.