Cartographic School
Definition
An early nineteenth-century movement, led by Guerry and Quetelet, that plotted crime statistics onto geographic maps to study how offending varied by region, alongside factors such as literacy, wealth, and population density.
Related terms
- Economic Determinism
- The theoretical position, developed most fully by Bonger, that the economic structure of a society, particularly its mode of production, is the...
- Moral Statistics
- The nineteenth-century term for the systematic study of social phenomena, including crime, suicide, and marriage, using official numerical records rather than individual...
- Thermic Law of Crime
- Quetelet's finding that violent, personal crime peaks in warmer months and southern regions while property crime peaks in colder months and northern...
- Absolute Poverty
- Deprivation measured against a fixed subsistence threshold, such as inadequate food or shelter, distinct from relative poverty and less central to Bonger's...
- Adolphe Quetelet
- Belgian astronomer and mathematician who generalised statistical regularity to social behaviour and formulated the thermic law of crime.
- Andre-Michel Guerry
- French lawyer who used the compte general de l'administration de la justice criminelle to build the first choropleth crime maps of France,...
- Criminality and Economic Conditions
- The English title of Bonger's 1905 Dutch work Criminaliteit en Socialisme, the founding text of his economic theory of crime.
- Relative Poverty
- Deprivation measured against the standard of living and expectations of one's own society, which Bonger treated as a stronger driver of crime...
- Willem Bonger
- Dutch criminologist who published Criminality and Economic Conditions, arguing capitalism cultivates the egoism behind crime.
Explained in these topics
- The Cartographic School and Economic Theories of Crime
- Cartographic School and Economic Theories of CrimeThe early nineteenth-century movement that mapped official crime statistics by region and offence type to study geographic and social patterns in offending.