BUILT ENVIRONMENT AND ITS IMPACT ON CRIMES RELATED TO WOMEN IN NCT OF DELHI: A PILOT SURVEY

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to critically analyze the impact of the built environment on crimes related to women in the National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi through a pilot study with minimum responses. The objective of the study was to examine the built environment attributes affecting the crimes related to women in NCT of Delhi and to compare the very high crime rate areas vs very low crime rate areas as per the Delhi Police crime statistics to know the basic root cause of the incidence of crimes. The methodology adopted for the study is a structured questionnaire survey and statistical data analysis. The SPSS 23 statistical package is used for this study. A total of four wards (neighbour-hoods) were selected for the present study comprising two wards from very high crime and two wards from very low crime rate districts of Delhi and a total of 80 responses were collected for this pilot study. The findings of the study also validate the perception of the residents which confirm that the lack of desirable built environment facilities lead to high crime rate in the selected wards i.e. IP Extension and Mayur Vihar-II, whereas the availability of adequate desirable built environment facilities precedent of low rate of crime committed against women in the selected wards i.e. Pitam Pura and Shalimar Bagh. The future scope of the study is to undertake a comprehensive study of all the attributes of built environment impacting the crime rates against women in NCT of Delhi on the basis of structured questionnaire survey (the same questionnaire has been used for the pilot survey for 80 numbers of respondents) with a sample size of 450-500 to reduce the chances of error and to generalize the findings of the study.