This study developed and applied risk assessment tools on crime generating area or space. This study comes from a series of studies on the subject. First phase was conducted in 2012 on low-income households and high diensity zones of housings with multiple families. Second phase was conducted on commercial areas. This study is the third phase. Unlike last two phases which focused on a specific area, this study reflects political changes with the coming of the Park Administration, who designated four crimes as “four great evils.” Among these designated crimes, this study focuses on sexual assault.

The difference of this study compared to the previous series is development and application of assessment tools for sexual assault risk and school violence risk, and with the purpose of providing objective values of relative risk. For this purpose, the concept of crime risk was reconceptualized and crime risk was assessed as the sum of current occurnces of crime and future possibility of occurrence. In case of sexual assault crime risk assessment, the purpose was to establish an objective and sustainable model that can be equally applied to all admnistrative areas above uep, myun, dong in the entire country. Also, research on school violence usually focuses on information and situation from within the school, and there is lack of research on vulnerability of surrounding environment to crime. With this in consideration, this study will, from a crime opportunity perspective, will examine phyiscal environment of external space and surrounding environment of schools, extrapolate crime vulnerability factors and prevent spatial displacement of school violence and provide physical environment improvement measures to expand crime supression effect in the community.

This study attempted a spatial approach to sexual assult and school violence as a means to establishing reliability of sexual assault and school violent crime risk assessment tool. Spatial approach often seeks Hot-Spots for sexual assault and school violence, and an analysis was condcted on the interactive aspect of event locations as well as clustering and dispersion. Location charactersitics of crime risk was also analyzed. Results showed spatial clustering for sexual assault and school violence, and this clustering was systematically generated by event locations of sexual assault and school violence. Specifically, in Hot spot analysis results, there was both similarities and differences between different areas regarding sexual assault and school violence. In areas where there are Hot Spot clusters were found to have no relationship with sexual assault and school violence, and clustering of sexual crimes and school violence was distributed in and around subway stations. As for differences between areas, area A, area C, area D, which have universities in them, have clear signs of clustering, while area B has multiple clusterings. In case of school violence, they often occurred in and around subway stations, and considering that many of them were occuring in residential areas, this seems to be the result of a distribution of property space through a linear path in the form of ‘subway station -> commercial area -> residential area -> commercial area -> residential area.’ The reason that school violence clusters among certain subway stations rather than on all of them, it seems it is due to differences in distribution of property space.

Next, significant finds in spatial characteristics of sexual assault and school violence in distance analysis means there is interaction between crime event locations. Interaction indicates does not mean there is a causal relationship between a sexual assault or crime violence event leading to similar crime event in the vicinity. Rather, interaction is a correlation between two locations of crime events, where a sexual assault or school violence event occuring on a location means the possibility of a similar crime occurring in the area is high. Considering that environmental factor can influence crime, interactional aspect of sexual assault and school violence can be shared by similarity of locations where the crime events took place, and it is possible that rather than that spatial unit that can general crime event is mixed with different spatial characteristics, it is rather that crime events cluster on a location due to a similar environmental characteristic that can generate crime events. This means it is more appropriate to categorize urban space according to its environmental characteristics rather than a simple categorization into residential, commercial and industrial.

Furthermore, crime risk assessment index should be able to be used more objectively and continuously. This crime risk assesment tool, which took 3 years in development, can provide a unique value of crime risk of a particular area and compare it to a unit of anlaysis such as si, gun, gu, uep, meon, dong, and find out relative danger. This development has lead to the establishment of such a system. There were efforts to take reference from advanced systems from other countries to develop a system appropriate to South Korea, and the crime risk assessment tool oriented towards the CRIMECAST model provided in this study can be used for future references in developing an appropriate assessment tool. Also, for improving accuracy, consistency, continuity of assessment tools, official records should be open for research, not just for the assessment tool from this study, but for all assessment tools. In addition, like NCVS of the United States, South Korea shold conduct a more systematic and continuous victimization survey to provide a useful index for risk assessment.

Last, in order to develop sexual assault and school violence crime assessment as a policy, there needs promotion for the community, and we need their understanding and form a consensus. Also, there needs to be active efforts to provide support for this policy and other related policies. This should not be taken as seeing that it is only a crime vulnerability arising from a location characteristic that generates crime events. Rather, it is more appropriate for related institutions to continuously seek to encourage community elements to supress and decrease sexual assault and school violence