Crime geography and its study in the Republic of Kazakhstan

A brief analysis of crime in the Republic of Kazakhstan has been carried out on the basis of criminal statistics from 2003 to the first half of 2016 as well as in the regions and cities of national significance from 2011 to 2015. Based on the results of the analysis it is concluded that the study of the regional features of crime is relevant; according to the author, it is an important condition for differential crime prevention in each territorial entity of the country. The adoption of the Program on Crime Prevention and Fight against Crime in the Republic of Kazakhstan for 2003-2004 shows the theoretical relevance and practical importance of such academic research. It was indicated in the Program that "the stabilization and subsequent weakening of the criminal situation in the country is impossible without the development of an effective system of crime prevention at both local and national levels". However, it was not implemented due to the lack of a single conceptual framework in the national criminology in the field of spatial distribution of crime fundamental research in this area. The study of the problems of the territorial distribution of crime in the former USSR republics is carried out in two main directions planned long ago in the Soviet criminology: 1) the study of crime in specific territorial entities; 2) the analysis of the territorial differences of crime and its determinants. The article considers the terminological system of this field of criminology including such terms as "territorial crime" and "regional crime". While making a comparative semantic analysis, the author comes to a conclusion that the latter concept, unlike the first, has a limited terminological meaning, which complicates its correct use in the investigation of crime in such sub-level administrative and territorial entities as area, region, city, village. The article covers some debating points related to the subject and object of crime geography as a separate section of criminological science and the unconvincing position of scholars who suppose that crime geography should be limited to studying crime, its causes and conditions only, without paying attention to the issues of the personality of a criminal and the problems of crime prevention. Based on the theoretical analysis in the article, the author proposes a new definition of the term "crime geography".

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