Crime in a City in Transition: The Case of Tallinn, Estonia

Abstract

The objective of this article is to characterise the criminogenic conditions of an eastern European city experiencing the transition from a planned to a market-oriented economy. Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, has been chosen as the case study. The article first describes the various levels of a set of expressive and acquisitive offences in Tallinn and then assesses whether patterns of crime in Tallinn are caused by underlying processes similar to the ones indicated in the Western literature of urban criminology. The study identifies variables that most significantly contribute to the variation of crime ratios using regression models, GIS and spatial statistical techniques. Findings suggest that, although there is no dramatic difference between the geography of crimes in Tallinn and those found in western European and North American cities, some of the explanatory variables function in ways which would not be predicted by Western literature.