Emile Durkheim, a French sociologist, suggested that crime was not indicative of a pathology or illness in society, but at certain levels was simply evidence of the normal functioning of communities. Crime helped to define and solidify norms in society. In The Criminology of Place, Weisburd and team suggest that there is a “normal level of crime” in cities, but one that relates to the concentration of crime at place and not to the overall rate of crime.
Threat Analysis Group’s CrimeAnalysis software application has a Threshold function which identifies mathematical “normal” levels of crime for specific sites (properties). For more information, please see CrimeAnalysis.