The nature of rape places

The objective of this article is to characterise the distribution and the urban landscape in which outdoor rapes happen in Stockholm, the capital of Sweden. Geographical Information Systems (GIS) underlie the methodology of this research that combines crime police records, police protocols and information from fieldwork of a sample of rape places. Rapes are concentrated in the inner city areas but follow a patchy pattern in some parts of the periphery. Rapes happen in places with poor visibility but that offer an easy escape for the offender. A large share of them happen in the weekends, holidays and hot months of the year, which can be associated with unstructured leisure routine activities of individuals. Results show that the role of environment on the occurrence of rape varies over time and space - a fact with important implications for research and safety interventions.