RT Article T1 Where the action is in crime?: an examination of variability of crime across different spatial units in The Hague, 2001–2009 JF Journal of quantitative criminology VO 32 IS 3 SP 449 OP 469 A1 Steenbeek, Wouter A1 Weisburd, David 1954- LA English YR 2016 UL https://krimdok.uni-tuebingen.de/Record/1559076690 AB Objectives To identify how much of the variability of crime in a city can be attributed to micro (street segment), meso (neighborhood), and macro (district) levels of geography. We define the extent to which different levels of geography are important in understanding the crime problem within cities and how those relationships change over time. Methods Data are police recorded crime events for the period 2001–2009. More than 400,000 crime events are geocoded to about 15,000 street segments, nested within 114 neighborhoods, in turn nested within 44 districts. Lorenz curves and Gini coefficients are used to describe the crime concentration at the three spatial levels. Linear mixed models with random slopes of time are used to estimate the variance attributed to each level. Results About 58–69 % of the variability of crime can be attributed to street segments, with most of the remaining variability at the district level. Our findings suggest that micro geographic units are key to understanding the crime problem and that the neighborhood does not add significantly beyond what is learned at the micro and macro levels. While the total number of crime events declines over time, the importance of street segments increases over time. Conclusions Our findings suggest that micro geographic units are key to understanding the variability of crime within cities—despite the fact that they have received little criminological focus so far. Moreover, our results raise a strong challenge to recent focus on such meso geographic units as census block groups. K1 Hierarchical model K1 Street Segment K1 Crime trends K1 Law of crime concentration K1 Crime and place K1 The criminology of place K1 Street segment K1 Hierarchical mod DO 10.1007/s10940-015-9276-3