Umar, F;
Johnson, S;
Cheshire, J;
(2020)
Assessing the Spatial Concentration of Urban Crime: An Insight from Nigeria.
Journal of Quantitative Criminology
10.1007/s10940-019-09448-3.
(In press).
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Abstract
Objective: Research demonstrates that crime is concentrated. This finding is so consistent that David Weisburd refers to this as the “law of crime concentration at place”. However, most research on crime concentration has been conducted in the US or European cities and has used secondary data sources. In this study, we examine whether the law of crime concentration applies in the context of sub-Saharan Africa using primary data. / Methods: A crime victimization survey was used to collect data in the city of Kaduna (Nigeria). Using these data, the concentration of crime (breaking-and-entering and domestic theft) was examined at the household, street segment, and neighborhood levels. Specifically, variants of a Lorenz curve and the Gini index (GI) were used to examine whether crime concentrates at these different spatial scales and if such concentration reflects anything beyond the spatial distribution of opportunity for these types of offenses. / Results: Crime was found to concentrate at all spatial scales, and having accounted for expectation, given the distribution of opportunity, crime was most concentrated at the household level, closely followed by street segments. It was relatively less concentrated at the neighborhood level. / Conclusion: The current study extends previous research in a number of ways. It shows that the law of crime concentration at place applies in a very different context to most previous work. Unlike previous studies, we use primary data collected specifically to test the law, avoiding problems associated with the dark figure of crime. Moreover, the findings persist after accounting for crime opportunity.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Assessing the Spatial Concentration of Urban Crime: An Insight from Nigeria |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1007/s10940-019-09448-3 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1007/s10940-019-09448-3 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © The Author(s) 2020 This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
| Keywords: | Crime concentration; Breaking and entering; Theft; Kaduna; Nigeria; Monte Carlo simulation |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science > Dept of Security and Crime Science UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS > Dept of Geography |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10088450 |
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