Wouter Steenbeek

Senior Researcher

Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement

I am a senior researcher at the Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement, a research institute of the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research.

Most of my work is on the ‘geography of crime’. I describe spatial and temporal variations in crime, and explain these variations as a function of the characteristics of places and of how potential offenders, potential victims, informal and formal guardians use their spatial environment over daily and weekly time cycles.

I’m always up for collaboration. Send me an email if you’re interested!

Are you interested in situational and spatial criminology? Consider joining the ‘Space, Place, and Crime’ working group of the European Society of Criminology.

Interests

Criminology
Spatio-temporal patterns
Machine Learning
Quantitative research methods
R

Education

PhD in Sociology, 2011
Department of Sociology/Interuniversity Centre for Social Science Theory and Methodology (ICS), Utrecht University
MSc in Business Informatics, 2004
Utrecht University
Propedeuse in Information Science, 2001
Utrecht University

Blog Posts

How R packages are licensed (by Task View)

How are R packages on CRAN licensed? And does this differ per Task View? I use waffle charts (square pie charts) to visualize the distribution of licenses.

Last updated on Oct 15, 2020 8 min read

Geographic distance and shortest-path network length for short distances

For nodes A and B that are not not too far away from each other, how does the geometric distance (as the crow flies) and the length of the shortest path following the road network compare? This is a follow-up of a previous post.

Oct 2, 2020 22 min read

Geographic distance and Road distance are highly correlated (in the four largest municipalities of the Netherlands)

If you travel within a city from A to B, how different is the geometric distance (as the crow flies) and the length of the shortest path following the road network? For the 4 largest municipalities of the Netherlands (Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague, and Utrecht) I randomly samply a large number of intersections and construct the straight lines and road network shortest-paths between these nodes, and compare their total lengths. tl;dr; they are highly correlated.

Sep 28, 2020 27 min read

Publications

(auto-generated, please forgive errors)

Martin A. Andresen, Cory P. Haberman, Shane D. Johnson, Wouter Steenbeek (2021). Advances in Place-Based Methods: Editors’ Introduction. Journal of Quantitative Criminology.

DOI

Wouter Steenbeek, Stijn Ruiter (2021). Non-spatial and spatial linear regression. The Study of Crime and Place: A Methods Handbook.

Preprint Code

Sabine EM van Sleeuwen, Stijn Ruiter, Wouter Steenbeek (2021). Right place, right time? Making crime pattern theory time-specific. Crime Science.

DOI

Wouter Steenbeek, Henk Elffers (2021). A Simulation Study into the Generation of Near Repeat Victimizations. Agent based modelling for criminological theory testing and development.

Verity Tether, Nick Malleson, Wouter Steenbeek, Dan Birks (2021). Using Agent-Based Models to Investigate the Presence of Edge Effects around Crime Generators and Attractors. Agent based modelling for criminological theory testing and development.

See all publications