Crime Geographical Displacement: Testing Its Potential Contribution to Crime Prediction

Zengli Wang,Minxuan Lan,Hanlin Zhou,Lin Liu

doi:10.3390/ijgi8090383

Abstract

Crime geographical displacement has been examined in many Western countries. However, little is known about its existence, distribution, and potential predictive ability in large cities in China. Compared to the existing research, this study contributes to the current research in three ways. (1) It provides confirmation that crime geographical displacement exists in relation to burglaries that occur in a large Chinese city. (2) A crime geographical displacement detector is proposed, where significant displacements are statistically detected and geographically displayed. Interestingly, most of the displacements are not very far from one another. These findings confirm the inferences in the existing literature. (3) Based on the quantitative results detected by the crime geographical displacement detector, a crime prediction method involving crime geographical displacement patterns could improve the accuracy of the empirical crime prediction method by 7.25% and 3.1 in the capture rate and prediction accuracy index (PAI), respectively. Our current study verifies the feasibility of crime displacement for crime prediction. The feasibility of the crime geographical displacement detector and results should be verified in additional areas.

Highlights

As a response to crime prevention initiatives, displacements refer to the activities that offenders, consciously or unconsciously, change in their original crime implementation plans due to the potential high risk [1]
(3) Based on the quantitative results detected by the crime geographical displacement detector, a crime prediction method involving crime geographical displacement patterns could improve the accuracy of the empirical crime prediction method by 7.25% and 3.1 in the capture rate and prediction accuracy index (PAI), respectively
Crime Prediction Ability of repeat and near-repeat (RNR) and spatial-temporal crime displacement (STCD) we investigate whether there is a pattern of RNR victimization for burglaries in

Summary

Introduction

As a response to crime prevention initiatives, displacements refer to the activities that offenders, consciously or unconsciously, change in their original crime implementation plans due to the potential high risk [1]. The existence of crime displacement brings great uncertainty to the emergence of crime victimizations and, increases the difficulty in crime prediction, which calls for additional studies from researchers and practical efforts of practitioners [5]. We focus on geographical displacement, which is the form most commonly recognized [6]. Geographical displacement refers to offenders moving from one place to another as a result of crime prevention initiatives. Studies of crime spatial displacements provide important empirical evidence and experimental support for our current study [1,3,5,7,8]. Many of the analyses and the techniques addressed could be applicable to other types of displacement

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion