Assessing the Spatial Concentration of Urban Crime: An Insight from Nigeria

Faisal Umar,Shane D Johnson,James A Cheshire

doi:10.1007/s10940-019-09448-3

Faisal Umar, Shane D Johnson + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10940-019-09448-3

Copy DOI

Abstract

ObjectiveResearch 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.MethodsA 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.ResultsCrime 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.ConclusionThe 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.

Highlights

Research concerned with the distribution of urban crime is not new and consistently demonstrates that it is concentrated (e.g. Pierce et al 1988; Sherman et al 1989; Weisburd et al 1992, 2004; Johnson 2010; Weisburd et al 2012; Bowers 2014; Weisburd and Amram 2014; Curman et al 2015; Mazeika and Kumar 2017)
The Nigerian culture of ‘brother’s keeper’—that neighbors must care for each other— contrasts with Euro-American culture and encourages greater social interaction between neighbors, enhancing social control. Given this unique environmental setting, combined with a distinct socio-cultural orientation, it is plausible that the distribution of crime in this context may be expected to exhibit a different pattern to what has been observed in Europe and North America
We examine the distribution of crime in the context of Nigeria, to see if: (1) crime concentrates at the household, street segment and neighborhood units of analysis more than would be expected on a chance basis (Hypothesis 1); and, (2) there is evidence to suggest that in this setting crime is more concentrated at smaller units of analysis (Hypothesis 2)

Summary

Results

Patterns of crime concentration were examined at the three spatial scales discussed above: household, street segment and neighborhood. It is important to note that the descriptive analysis presented above only considers the number of crimes recorded for each unit of analysis—different street segments or neighborhoods, will not have the same numbers of sampled households—the opportunity for crime will not be evenly distributed across them To address this issue, and to provide a more complete picture of observed patterns, we derive variations of the Lorenz curve (Lorenz 1905) to examine the degree to which crime concentrates at each spatial scale whilst taking account of the number of crime opportunities across them. These figures are simple to interpret and show, for example, that about 50% of incidents occur on about 11% of street segments This is very different to the “naïve” line of equality which shows the expected distribution, derived assuming that the risk of crime is equal across spatial units. Crime becomes significantly more concentrated as we move down the cone of spatial resolution

Introduction

Discussion