Highway landscapes and crime

Do highways create crime?

Retailers say rings of habitual shoplifters are proliferating nationwide, but particularly in urban areas such as Washington, where retailers and malls are packed close together and there is easy access to highways.

Retail Gangs: A New Breed of Thieves, in the Washington Post

Places where no one goes, where one can disappear quickly -- natural realms of danger, crime, and fantasy.

Link: "Shopping" (1994) in IMDB

Link: NYT on tow trucks prowling parking lots