Familiar Strangers and Crime at Transit Stations: Is Crime Lower at Train Stations Where Familiar Strangers are Present?

Familiar strangers—individuals related through regular and repeated visual encounter occurring without verbal interaction—may reduce the risk of crime at places by increasing guardianship and internal motivation for norm compliance. This study examines the association between familiar stranger presence and incidents of theft and disorder at train stations using transit smart card and crime data for 22 stations across a six-month period. Familiar strangers are operationally defined as individual transit cards that are co-present within a 30-min temporal window on more than two occasions across a one-month period at a given train station. We apply logistic regression to estimate the likelihood of disorder and theft crimes within a 400-m radius of train stations controlling for station environmental features, co-located facilities and neighbourhood socio-demographic characteristics. Our results show that the impact of familiar strangers on crime (disorder and theft) at train stations is moderated by the neighbourhood socio-demographic context. This may suggest that macro-level norms of informal social control are important for determining crime at micro-places such as transit stations. The findings also indicate that urban design and transport policies require greater flexibility to enable intra-network variability in station design and formal security to enhance ridership.